A Ghost Story

This film stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara and is directed by David Lowry so reunites them after Aint them Bodies Saints and is one of the strangest, most haunting films I’ve ever seen. Yes, I know there are issues with Affleck, but there are a lot of cast and crew involved in this, so I can’t see any point in punishing them.

It’s a very quiet film, a sow burner with not a lot of dialogue, so is in some ways a very old fashioned tale, of visual story telling.

For most of the film Affleck is a ghost covered in a sheet, which seems really corny but there are moments when this simple image takes on surprising forms. He is walking across a flat, green landscape and there is something so graceful, so .. it’s hard to explain. He is a man in a sheet, yet the billowing fabric makes him seem saintlike – almost godlike at times. At other moments he is also like a madonna.

He is stuck in a house. After he dies, his wife is given a pie. She starts eating it, and eats… she’s voracious. This is how she grieves. It’s incredible. There’s another ghost next door, but in a floral sheet, so suggests this is a woman of a certain age.

This is such a hard film to review because not a lot happens, and yet there is a lot going on. The ghost is invisible, yet trapped within the house.

Thoroughly original, haunting, highly recommended.