A Ghost Story
04/02/18 Filed in: DVD
This film didn't make our Cineworld multiplex, so when the DVD appeared we decided to watch it, based on some very interesting positive reviews. It's number nine in the Guardian's top 50 films of 2017.
It is different, and I would suggest very different from any supernatural film that you may have seen. It's not horror, and to an extent it's not even spooky. And even though the ghost has a few malevolent moments, it's not really scary.
Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara play a young couple living in a bit of a shack of a home in Texas. She wants to move, and he doesn't. We only know him as C, and her as M, not that proper names are that important to the story. One night they are disturbed by the sound of somebody 'crashing' the keyboard of his piano. They cannot discover why this happened, and at this point you think it's the beginning of the ghost story. But it isn't, and all will be revealed much later.
Not far into the film we see C in a crashed car, followed by M identifying his body in the hospital. She leaves his body, covered with a sheet, and the camera continues to focus on him for quite a considerable time. We then see the body sit up, and still with the sheet over its head, with two holes for the eyes, it starts to walk down the corridor of the hospital dragging the sheet like a bride's train. Of course, nobody sees it. It is a ghost, closely modelled on Casper. It makes its way back to the house, where it proceeds to watch M in her grief. This watching continues up until the time that M decides to move. During this time, in her grief, we see her demolish a pie that has been left for her. I hope Rooney Mara didn't have too many takes of this scene, which is long and represents a single take, as she would have put on a few pounds at the end of it. Before M moves, she paints the inside of the house, and at one point pushes a piece of paper with a message into a crack before painting over it. C had previously explained to M why she does things like this, and the piece of paper becomes a fixation for the ghost, who throughout the film attempts to remove it.
From this point we see other people move into the house, with the ghost watching on. For the most part It doesn't interfere, but in the case of one family, a woman with two boisterous children, it does become upset, and performs some quite frightening haunting by trashing the kitchen. The family subsequently leaves. Others move in, and the ghost watches on, but in time the house has gone, and the ghost now occupies a new commercial building, presumably built on the site at some time in the future. Then, bizarrely, it travels back in time, to when some early settlers arrive at the place, staking out the plot for a house. All this time it just watches.
We get a clue as to what it is doing when, soon after M leaves, it sees another ghost in a nearby house, which says that it is waiting for somebody, although it can't remember who. Is our ghost waiting for M? And as the time frame moves forward again from the early settlers, we see our ghost observing C and M, reliving the opening scenes of the film. And it is in fact the ghost of C who crashed the piano, in a weird overlay of the future and the past. And things become even stranger as it then watches the ghost, that is itself, arrive after C's death.
Time moves on again, and the house is bulldozed, after which the ghost finally retrieves the note from the wall, which seems to be what it had been waiting for.
This is a film that holds your attention, you could say that it haunts you, and continues to do so even after you have watched it. So much is left unsaid that it leaves you analysing and questioning. Definitely a one-off.
From this point we see other people move into the house, with the ghost watching on. For the most part It doesn't interfere, but in the case of one family, a woman with two boisterous children, it does become upset, and performs some quite frightening haunting by trashing the kitchen. The family subsequently leaves. Others move in, and the ghost watches on, but in time the house has gone, and the ghost now occupies a new commercial building, presumably built on the site at some time in the future. Then, bizarrely, it travels back in time, to when some early settlers arrive at the place, staking out the plot for a house. All this time it just watches.
We get a clue as to what it is doing when, soon after M leaves, it sees another ghost in a nearby house, which says that it is waiting for somebody, although it can't remember who. Is our ghost waiting for M? And as the time frame moves forward again from the early settlers, we see our ghost observing C and M, reliving the opening scenes of the film. And it is in fact the ghost of C who crashed the piano, in a weird overlay of the future and the past. And things become even stranger as it then watches the ghost, that is itself, arrive after C's death.
Time moves on again, and the house is bulldozed, after which the ghost finally retrieves the note from the wall, which seems to be what it had been waiting for.
This is a film that holds your attention, you could say that it haunts you, and continues to do so even after you have watched it. So much is left unsaid that it leaves you analysing and questioning. Definitely a one-off.