AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
A ghost story3/17/2023 When Mara is still in the picture the narrative is more grounded. The narrative assumes the wandering timelessness of the ghost, who is not bound by any laws of time (but to some extent, those of space). A Ghost Story has the trappings of a horror film but never really strives to horrify. Only here the affect is not to induce fear or anxiety over the well-being of a character, but curiosity. The last time I remember a figure in the background popping up unexpectedly was in 1978’s Halloween (and there too the figure appeared in one scene at least, wearing a white bed sheet). She leaves the room but the camera remains static, with its boxy old school 4:3 framing, long enough for the corpse to surprisingly stoop up. Next scene is in a hospital morgue, camera again from afar as M identifies the body. M will get her wish of moving to the city, but with a heavy price to pay: grief. The camera tracks laterally and stops at the car crash, with Affleck flung head forward on the steering wheel. After a few more exposition domestic scenes we cut back to them framed overhead in bed embracing and kissing (same day? another day?) only to cut again to the extreme view of the house, smoke sweeping into view, only now the camera pans right to frame the source of the off-frame smoke: a car crash, in which C is a fatal victim. And after a few exposition scenes we cut to an overhead shot of the couple in bed caressing and then to an extreme long shot of the house from the street, the camera tracking slowly laterally as M drags a heavy trunk to the curb. The rounded edges of its 4:3 frame suggests or tries to fool us into thinking we are in another reality horror or found footage film, but it denies us this easy reading. A Ghost Story opens with a high angle shot of the couple lying together on the couch. A little bit like the Stephen King novella 1922, where a rural farming family is forever destroyed when the domestic tensions between the man who loves farm life and the woman who wants to sell and move to the city, lead to murder and supernatural retribution (the novella was adapted into an excellent film by Zak Hilditch in 2017). He likes the tranquil digs, she does not. (Roger Clark)Ĭ and M play a couple recently moved into a reclusive home in Fort Worth, Texas. These type of narrative shifts are not common in mainstream cinema, but perhaps can be expected when made by a director who cites as his direct influences for this film, “Tsai Ming-liang, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Chantal Akerman”. How else can you explain a film that features two big stars, Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, with one acting under a white sheet for most of the film and the other largely disappearing from the narrative after about 25 minutes. Talk about a change of pace: from Disney to a supernatural ghost story cloaked as an art film.Ī Ghost Story is original in multifaceted ways. The AQCC official release for the prize was given, “For its nuanced cinematic treatment of material and spiritual time across human landscape.” And this from a director whose previous film was Disney’s, Pete’s Dragon (2016). And a worthy winner of the Jury I was a apart of, the AQCC (“Association québécoise des critiques de cinéma”) Camera Lucida Prize at the Fantasia International Film Festival 2017. Which makes A Ghost Story one of the most original films to have come out of mainstream America in a long time. A Ghost Story (2017, David Lowery): Grief, Sorrow and Meloncholia Fantasia 2017, Winner of the Camera Lucida AQCC Prizeīy Donato Totaro Volume 22, Issue 6 / June 2018 13 minutes (3106 words)įor the majority of its running time, A Ghost Story is told from the point of view of a ghost, a recently dead young musician, played by Casey Affleck, identified only as “C”.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |