A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story (2017) is about a man who dies and stays in his house as a ghost under a sheet. A couple live in a small house. The man is killed in an accident. He sits up in the morgue under the sheet and goes home. He does not speak or move; he stands and watches. His wife grieves, then moves out. The ghost stays. Other people come to the house and they leave too. The house is demolished. A building goes up. He is still there. The idea is time. Time does not pass at human speed for him; years are skipped in a cut and he does not change. What keeps him is a secret: his wife pressed a note into a crack in the wall and he wants to read it. The most discussed scene is one of mourning. The woman sits on the floor and eats a pie. One take, no cuts, about five minutes. The camera does not move, and at the end she goes to the bathroom and is sick. Grief here is delivered through a body rather than a conversation. The film is shot in a 1.33 frame with rounded corners, like an old photograph. David Lowery directed it very cheaply and in secret. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara star. Affleck is under the sheet for most of it. There is almost no dialogue. It runs 92 minutes. Good for: slow cinema, films about grief, and formal experiment. Less good for: the pace is extremely slow and there is almost no plot.