A Ghost Story * * * *

      

The Ghost. Pretty scary hey?

  You need not bother looking for a cinema with an x-treme screen to watch this.  It won't enhance your viewing experience. For some reason, director David Lowery has formatted A Ghost Story as a square, like the old television format, complete with rounded corners.

       A young couple, (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) live in a bit of a run down house. We can tell they’re very much in love and enjoy the domestic bliss they have together. He does his music, she does her writing.  Then he dies (don’t worry that’s not a spoiler, this is what it takes to make a ghost).
        Then he returns to his home. But, of course, no one can see him, including his girlfriend, which is just as well as she’d burst out laughing. He looks like a last minute idea for Halloween, he’s the most unscary ghost you’ve ever seen. But that simplicity is part of the charm of this film.  He walks about the house in a sheet with eyeholes cut out of it, observing her and watching the changes she goes through.  In one scene we have to watch her soothe her grief by eating an entire family sized pie. It's in real time with one shot, and it takes ages! I didn’t know whether to giggle or shout at the screen “Get on with it!”.

     But time doesn't mean much to the ghost.  Place is everything. And so we watch him, stuck in this house as his girlfriend eventually moves out to start a  new life.  Another family moves in.  It’s just a struggling single Mum and her kids but he scares the hell out of them, somewhat losing our sympathy at that stage to be honest.  Later, an arty alternative lifestyle mob move in including a boozed up mouthy philosopher whose future prophesies kind of makes sense despite his crude delivery, his vanity and irritating demeanor.
Sometimes the house is vacant for long periods and in a way quite beautiful in its emptiness as we sense the silence and watch the natural light and shadows on the walls changing with the seasons.

    Years pass, and we cannot help but feel for the ghost and hope he doesn’t have earthly feelings because the boredom and loneliness would be insufferable  He can at least communicate a little with the ghost next door.  Both stuck in their respective homes, they wave to each other through the windows like grounded kids would.
 Eventually demolition and rebuilding happens but the ghost  remains in the same place.  The new building just goes up around him.

     But a fascinating thing happens, as time does not exist for the Ghost he not only finds himself years in the future in a replacement building which is a modern office, but he also goes through a loop and finds himself back at the time before the house was built, back in the pioneer days.

      A couple of clues are given to us as to how he can get out of this eternity of disassociation and much of his time is spent attempting to recover a message secreted away by his girlfriend.

   A Ghost Story is an audacious film, but it has a charm and a sincerity that won me over and I have to say I liked it.