31 Days of Halloween, Day 23- A Ghost Story (2017)

Directed by: David Lowery

Top 8 Cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Carlos Bermudez, Rob Zabrecky, Jared Kopf, Kesha

Plot: Sad Boi, C, just wants to make his electro-pop bangers, snuggle his sweetie and not leave their ranch-style Dallas tract house, darnit! Well leave it he won’t when a fatal car accident renders him a sheet ghost in this stylish meditation on grief and time’s passage. This ghost will travel far into the future and back around again. Perhaps he, all along, was the thing that went bump in the night.

Response: Soaring strings and star-dust. Disaffected Affleck on his headphones. We like to see the light hit that sheet ghost. Will Oldham asks if you’ve got God. Will Oldham is a shitty party guest. Oldham ain’t no Olaf Stapledon. Ghosts framed in windows in paint-chipped houses, look out at other ghosts similarly window-framed, similarly bound to paint-chipped homes. Dude, I’m pretty sad for these ghosts. Rooney Mara grief-devours a pie. Affleck bro lookin jacked af, nice body bro. Somber and elegiac. Ghosts go out like a puff of daffodil flesh. What did the note SAY Lowery?! The movie explains the sheet but not the eyeholes. It is lonely for the living with hearts-blown wide open but lonelier for the dead and lingering who watch as time does its time thing, erupting new buds and blossoms, alchemising loss, forcing an adaptation for all but they. I just wanted him to go over and hug her, which of course he can’t do. Can never do again. All that you carry is the rumpled sheet around you. Ghosts CAN flicker light bulbs, jimmy door knobs, caress you through the sheets, telepathically talk to other ghosts, throw shit around, be in two spots at once, travel back in time, haunt their own damn selves, be the reason their gf’s always moving, show themselves to little boys. Ghosts CAN’T leave the site of their haunting while the building stands, claw paint chips quickly, rescue pioneers from indigenous arrows, commit suicide by jumping off the 108th floor. Life is precious. Be good.

Quick Thoughts: If I’m doing a 31 Days of Halloween Movie Blog, you know I’m watching the A-24 sheet ghost movie!

I’ve been drawn to David Lowery for awhile now. He feels like a for-hire journeyman director on the auteur cusp, helming this and that Arthurian-Legend, green-man-monster, sword-and-sorcery flick, The Green Knight, also for A-24, which was too woke for my engaged Pagan Libertarian besties. He also did two of the more interesting-looking live-action IP remakes for Disney (Pete’s Dragon and a new Peter Pan). As well as some other (non-fantasy) Affleck, Mara, Redford stuff*.

This one definitely had a vibe.

The cinematography was awesome at times recalling the immaculately composed shots of Roy Andersson.

Idunno. It was pretty good. It got pretty weird and stupid. It was pretty sad. I couldn’t tell if Kesha was the other sheet ghost. I was worried for awhile that the Will Oldham monologue was the thesis and I was like, “what kinda materialist fatalism am I in for here?” but of course the ghost’s existence itself negates Oldham’s rant.

Not all movies need to make sense to be dope.

Alternate Fantasy Ending: SPOILERS What if, after the ghost sheet drops, the camera drifts up into the luscious twilight sky, the clouds all dappled in peach, then further, back into the cosmos, and further still, past asteroid belts and swelling novas. We hide a cut to the top of a wind swept mist vista. There are pearly gates here but they’re rendered in really shitty cgi. Casey Affleck is here, no longer a ghost. He is naked and we see his dong, tastefully flaccid. He’s got these giant wings but they’re lice-ridden. He’s got his headphones on and he’s smiling listening to his latest sick beat. He turns his head and gazes directly into the camera. Directly at you, the viewer. He gives a shaka with his left hand and nods. SUDDENLY the camera spins back down to earth. To the gravesite of the Rooney Mara character. The note in the wall is resting on her grave. The wind blows it open revealing its message. At first we just see, “I Love You” but then the wind flutters the paper a little more and we see its full message is “I Love You, Doggy.” Smash cut to black, credits roll over Slip Knot’s “Down With the Sickness”

Second Opinions:

“…corresponds perfectly to my difficult-to-grasp perspectives on ghosts and specters and their relationship to life and time.” The film’s director, David Lowery, on the writings of Virginia Woolf

“The unconventional narrative structure seems more beguiling the more you think about it - this is a film designed to expand in your memory.” - Ben Sachs, Chicago Reader

“The movie is trippy and almost willfully opaque—all I can say for sure is I left A Ghost Story feeling full.” - Gary Thomspon, Philadelphia Inquirer

“A limp, intellectually lazy, leaden load of grief-posturing... a hollow thing that wears sorrow as a fashion accessory in the hopes that it makes it look mysterious.” - Travis Johnson, Celluloid and Whiskey

“But she didn't eat a whole pie!! Absolutely loved the movie but this has been driving me crazy for weeks. Why does everyone say she ate "an entire pie" or "a whole pie" when she actually ate much closer to half of the pie, leaving almost the entire crust? I guess people mean she ate from an entire pie (as opposed to an individual slice) but I was surprised when the scene ended. How about the way she ate the pie though? I read beforehand that it was her first time eating pie and amazingly enough you could tell. Why did she need to stab each piece with a fork four times before picking it up? Now I want pie.” - MelloHallie on Reddit

“Four people walked out of the screening I attended of A Ghost Story. I found it to be a profoundly beautiful and sad story of loss and the passage of time, of impermanence and change.” Fletcher Powell on KMUW, Wichita Public Radio

Score:

Autumn Vibes: 4/5

Scares & Chills: 0/5

Cultural & Cinematic Importance: 2/5

Monster Action: 3/5

* Robert Redford’s not in this one, though.