A Ghost Story

A Ghost Story

If you ever wanted to know how long you can watch Rooney Mara eat pie for, boy do I have the movie for you.

This was one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, so naturally I was curious to see it. I didn't want to support it in the theater because of Casey Affleck's experience with sexual harassment, so I waited for it come out on the Netflix DVD because I'm 85 years old and still have that. I almost wish I had seen it in the theater simply for the reactions the audience might have to the avalanche of pretentiousness that is this movie.

Spoilers ahead.

For me, the definition of "pretentious" when it comes to art is that the artist thinks their piece is far more interesting and important than it actually is. This movie is a perfect example of that. The concept is simple: a man dies and his ghost is now stuck in his house and watches as his wife moves on and the house goes through different stages. There's also kinda time travel. I don't know.

The concept for the film excited me, as the first act seemed to set up a series of vignettes as we see different people and events within the house. Instead we get two groups who move in: one average family with a single mom, where nothing really happens except Ghostfleck freaks out and throws stuff everywhere, which causes the family to leave, and then we see a house party full of people in their mid-30's who wax philosophical like they're high college students who think they're in a Linklater movie. After that the house gets demolished, becomes a big building, and then Ghostfleck is suddenly back in time and watches pioneers settle there, who then get killed by Native Americans, then eventually the house gets built again and Ghostfleck watches Rooney Mara and Alivefleck move into the house again. I guess it's supposed to be kinda like the end of Donnie Darko? Again, I don't know.

The way this movie was filmed is best described as "self-indulgent." There are many, many static long takes while something barely interesting is taking place. There's roughly 10 minutes of Rooney Mara crying and eating pie, and that's honestly the most interesting long take in the entire movie because it actually shows someone feeling an emotion. It clearly wants to be like Her or a Stanley Kubrick/Terrence Malick film, where existence and humanity are pondered and there are many long takes, but in those films the long takes actually have meaning behind them. There's multiple-minute shots of just Joaquin Phoenix's face in Her because it's supposed to emphasize his loneliness, and in the films of Malick and Kubrick they're typically used to convey the grandness of the setting. In A Ghost Story it almost feels like a younger sibling filmmaker trying to copy their older sibling filmmaker by using the same deliberate pacing and camera style as them, but ultimately not understanding the substance behind the style. Not to be too harsh, but it feels a lot like a college student was given a professional cast and crew and all the student had to do was write the screenplay and tell the crew what kind of shots they wanted.

As far as the performances go, Rooney Mara is great as always, even though she isn't given much to work with, but I can't understand a word Casey Affleck says in the entire movie. Luckily he only has like 10 lines, but I still couldn't tell what any of them were. I loved Manchester by the Sea and I could understand him in that, but in this it's all mumbles. The guy delivering the pretentious speech at the party was okay, and he's really the only other character in the movie. Everyone else is almost treated more as props rather than characters. There's one ghost who lives next door to Ghostfleck who probably has the most powerful line in the film (spoken only in subtitles), after being asked who it's looking for, it responds "I don't remember." That's a nice insight into the life of a ghost, and honestly makes it a more memorable character than anyone else in the movie.

I really don't have a lot more to say on this one, other than I was fairly disappointed. The whole thing rang false to me, but that makes it a good reminder to make sure that style always has substance to back it up.