A white-sheeted, nostalgic ghost permanently resides in its home and everything that, in the passage of time, becomes after that.
A friend called me, laughing at IMDb’s reviews on this one. So, even though I don’t look at reviews before I watch a film, I only read the titles. I’ve seen cases before where reviews are either 1 or 10 and nothing in between, and since the titles were entertaining, I decided to give it a shot.
Let me be clear from the beginning. A Ghost Story is not for everyone! We are dealing with interesting yet peculiar storytelling with protracted, steady medium and long shots that initially make little sense. The narrative unfolds, though, and life, linearly or not, moves on with just a few edits. Be patient with these shots and think that your life doesn’t have cuts, either. It would also help if you perceived the narration as omniscient – being everywhere simultaneously. During this journey, I couldn’t help but feel the ghost’s loneliness and entrapment. The ability to manoeuvre in time and the inability to do nothing about it. Imagine yourself seeing the world spinning, confined by your questionable existence. An existence that is unknown to everybody as much as it is to you. But still you wait for someone to finally acknowledge this questionable existence you have become. Admittedly, after the ghost’s free fall, the convolution becomes also questionable. But please remember what I said earlier about the non-linear.
Have you ever wondered what the origins of déjà vu are? Cinema is a form of expression. That’s why it’s art. The aforementioned protracted shots make sense somewhere halfway through the film while understanding the narrative and David Lowery’s subjective perception of time and space. Let the mise-en-scène inaudibly “speak” when the silence is deafening. You may be wondering where she is. Has she become a ghost too? Has she gone to a final destination? Is there a final destination? But then think of something that you can potentially answer. Who is waiting for you?
P.S. A few days after I watched it, it came to light that one of the producers was accused of raping one of the film’s young girls. Hollywood’s depravity spreads like a pestilence!
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