July 24, 2017

GENRE | Rooney Mara Haunts 'A Ghost Story'

Casey Affleck Rooney Mara David Lowery | A Ghost Story

Texas filmmaker David Lowery has re-teamed with his Ain't Them Body Saints co-stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck for a stripped down yet haunting (while a little silly) film in the fittingly titled A Ghost Story. It's a simply told but abstract and wondrously bold cinematic encapsulation of grief, sadness, time, and existential life.

Mara and Affleck, credited only as "M" and "C", play a couple where the latter dies and comes back as a white sheet adorned "ghost" with two cut out eye holes following her literally and metaphorically as she slowly grieves. What follows is a slow, methodical rumination on the nature of living framed through the entire history of the rural Texas home they shared.

One of the most talked about scenes features Mara stress eating an entire pie (her first ever, evidently) in a long, nearly unbroken take is a bizarrely compelling portrait of an emotional meltdown. Framed in the 4:3 boxed-off Academy ratio, Lowery uses portrait style framing to further evoke his eerie mood in this and most of the slow, long takes that comprise the sparse but heavy film.

A Ghost Story is a daring and moving portrait of existential themes wrapped in a story about grief. Mara and Affleck are excellent and emotionally arresting as Lowery ambitiously executes his cinematic mood piece through small-scale but entirely inventive filmmaking.


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