A Ghost Story
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''A Ghost Story'' is a 2017 American
supernatural Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin , from Latin (above, beyond, or outside of) + (nature) Though the corollary term "nature", has had multiple meanings si ...
drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...
written and directed by David Lowery and starring
Casey Affleck Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt (born August 12, 1975) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Satellite Award. He beg ...
and
Rooney Mara Patricia Rooney Mara ( ; born April 17, 1985) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, ...
, with
Will Oldham Joseph Will Oldham (born January 15, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. From 1993 to 1997, he performed and recorded in collaboration with dozens of other musicians under variations of Palace (Palace, Palace Flophouse, Palace Br ...
, Liz Cardenas Franke, Sonia Acevedo, and
Rob Zabrecky Robert Zabrecky (born June 2, 1968, in Burbank, California) is an American actor, author, magician, and songwriter. His career began as a musician while being the front man for the band Possum Dixon. In the later years of his career, he has fo ...
in supporting roles. It is about a man who becomes a ghost and remains in the house he shared with his wife. The film had its world premiere at the
Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on January 22, 2017, and was released by
A24 A24 is an American independent entertainment company that specializes in film and television production, as well as film distribution. It is based in New York City. A24 was founded in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges. Pr ...
in the United States on July 7, 2017. It received positive reviews from critics but lukewarm reception from general audiences due to its
minimalist In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
execution.


Plot

A woman (credited as "M") mentions to her musician husband (credited as "C") that as a child, she moved residences frequently and took to hiding little notes wherever she lived. C is resistant to M's desire to move, creating tension within their relationship. When he finally acquiesces, they hear a loud bang while asleep, the source of which they are unable to identify. Shortly afterwards, C is killed in a car accident nearby. At the hospital, M covers his body with a sheet before departing. C awakens as a ghost, invisible to the living. Still covered with the sheet, he wanders through the hospital. A door of light opens before him, but he makes no attempt to approach it and it closes. C walks home and sees Linda, his landlord, drop off a pie. M arrives and eats the pie until she vomits. Unable to communicate with her, C watches M grieve before proceeding with her life. In the house next door, he sees another ghost covered by a flower-print sheet who says that they are waiting for someone, though they do not remember who. Upon discovering that M is dating another man, C jealously creates disturbances inside the house. Later, M listens to one of C's songs and recalls the first time he played it for her. She moves away, but first writes a note and hides it in a gap between some molding, which she paints over. C picks at the paint but is unable to reach the note. Later, a Spanish-speaking single mother moves into the house with her young son and daughter. C watches them eat, play the piano and celebrate Christmas. The children begin to sense his presence and become frightened. One night, he knocks a framed photo of the family off the piano and smashes dishes in the kitchen. The family moves out and the ghost continues scraping at the paint. At a party thrown by the next occupants, a woman says she has stopped working on her novel and a man responds by claiming all creative pursuits are pointless, as the universe will eventually
end End, END, Ending, or variation, may refer to: End *In mathematics: **End (category theory) **End (topology) **End (graph theory) ** End (group theory) (a subcase of the previous) **End (endomorphism) *In sports and games **End (gridiron football) ...
. The partygoers notice the lights flicker. The house is abandoned and becomes derelict. C's efforts to retrieve the note are interrupted by a
bulldozer A bulldozer or dozer (also called a crawler) is a large, motorized machine equipped with a metal blade to the front for pushing material: soil, sand, snow, rubble, or rock during construction work. It travels most commonly on continuous track ...
crashing through a wall. The house next door is also torn down; the flower-print ghost, while standing amongst the ruins, says "I don’t think they’re coming" and disappears from beneath its sheet. A skyscraper is built where the house was; once it is finished, C views a futuristic cityscape from the balcony before jumping off the ledge. The
celestial sphere In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, ...
rotates in reverse, and C finds himself in a field in the 19th century with a man who is driving stakes into the ground. The man's wife and three daughters arrive in a
covered wagon The covered wagon or prairie wagon, historically also referred to as an ambulance or prairie schooner, was a vehicle usually made out of wood and canvas that was used for transportation, prominently in 19th-century America. With roots in the he ...
, and the family prepares to build a house. The youngest daughter writes a note and hides it under a rock while humming the tune of C's song. Native Americans attack and kill the family, and C watches the girl's corpse decay. Back in the house, which is empty except for the piano, C sees himself and M enter and look around. His life in the house repeats itself; he witnesses their last argument, and upon hearing his past self finally give in, he sits down heavily at the piano, creating the bang that had earlier startled the couple. Later, C watches his earlier ghost-self watch M leave the house for the last time. He finally retrieves the note and, upon reading it, disappears, his empty sheet collapsing to the floor.


Cast

*
Casey Affleck Caleb Casey McGuire Affleck-Boldt (born August 12, 1975) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Satellite Award. He beg ...
as C *
Rooney Mara Patricia Rooney Mara ( ; born April 17, 1985) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including a Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, ...
as M * Kenneisha Thompson as Doctor * Liz Cardenas Franke as Linda * Barlow Jacobs as Gentleman Caller * Sonia Acevedo as Maria * Carlos Bermudez as Carlos * Yasmina Gutierrez as Yasmina * Kesha Sebert as Spirit Girl * Jared Kopf as Magician *
Will Oldham Joseph Will Oldham (born January 15, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter and actor. From 1993 to 1997, he performed and recorded in collaboration with dozens of other musicians under variations of Palace (Palace, Palace Flophouse, Palace Br ...
as Prognosticator *
Brea Grant Brea Colleen Grant is an American actress, writer, and director. She played the character of Daphne Millbrook in the NBC television series ''Heroes''. Early life Brea Grant was born and raised in Marshall, Texas. She earned bachelor's and maste ...
as Clara *
Augustine Frizzell Augustine Frizzell (born July 27, 1979) is an American actress, film director, and screenwriter. She made her feature film directorial debut with '' Never Goin' Back'' (2018). Early life Growing up in Garland, Texas, Frizzell attended South Garl ...
as Clara's Wife Who is Writing a Book * Jonny Mars as Oversharing Man *
Rob Zabrecky Robert Zabrecky (born June 2, 1968, in Burbank, California) is an American actor, author, magician, and songwriter. His career began as a musician while being the front man for the band Possum Dixon. In the later years of his career, he has fo ...
as Pioneer Man * Sara Tomerlin as Pioneer Woman * Margot Tomerlin as Pioneer Child * Sylvie Tomerlin as Pioneer Child * Savanna Walsh as Pioneer Child


Production


Development

David Lowery had wanted to make a film featuring a man in a rudimentary ghost costume "for a while", telling Comingsoon.net: "I just loved that image. I love taking something that is understood to be funny or charming or sweet or naive and instilling it with some degree of gravity." When he and his wife got in an argument about moving back to Texas, he began to write down the argument "thinking about my own attachment to physical spaces." After he thought to combine this with the idea about the ghost costume, he came up with the basic concept for the movie fairly quickly and began to write the screenplay in the spring of 2016. Lowery also used the film to work through what he termed "An existential crisis" brought on by reading an article about the possibility of a catastrophic
earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
, saying: "I was not feeling optimistic about the future of mankind. I felt the world was on its way to ending. The film became my way of dealing with those issues." The film's atypical 1.33:1 aspect ratio was chosen by Lowery partially because he thought it was thematically appropriate: "It’s about someone basically trapped in a box for eternity, and I felt the claustrophobia of that situation could be amplified by the boxiness of the aspect ratio." The ghost costume that was ultimately designed for the film ended up being more complicated than Lowery had anticipated. At first, the filmmakers attempted to simply use a normal
bed sheet A bed sheet is a rectangular piece of cloth used either singly or in a pair as bedding, which is larger in length and width than a mattress, and which is placed immediately above a mattress or bed, but below blankets and other bedding (such as ...
, but they found that even a king-sized sheet does not fully cover an adult male. The final costume required Affleck to wear certain other garments beneath the fabric to achieve the desired look, and the filmmakers found they had to resort to some "puppeteering" to keep the eyes in place. Beyond the practical constraints of the costume, Lowery also found that it impeded Affleck's ability to act, noting: "every unique physical trait as a human being was pronounced and exaggerated by this sheet over his head." This did not give Lowery the results he wanted, and he eventually solved the problem by reducing the amount Affleck moved, so "it became a matter of patience and posture and moving very specifically, slowly and rigidly."


Filming

Principal photography Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production. Personnel Besides the main film personnel, such as actor ...
began in June 2016. The majority of the film takes place within a single house, which was chosen by Lowery because it closely resembled the first house he lived in with his wife. As the house was about to be demolished, the film crew was allowed to use it for free. Some shots of the ghost, specifically those done during pickups or reshoots, do not feature Affleck, instead replacing him with the film's art director, David Pink, who was found to have a similar build. As the filmmakers did not know how the final product would turn out, the film was shot in secret and not officially announced until November 2016, at which point it was confirmed that Mara and Affleck were the leads. It was later revealed that
Kesha Kesha Rose Sebert (; born March 1, 1987), formerly stylized as Ke$ha, is an American singer and songwriter. In 2005, at age 18, Kesha was signed to Kemosabe Records. Her first major success came in early 2009 after she was featured on America ...
would appear in the film in a
cameo role A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly eit ...
.


Music

Daniel Hart composed the score for the film, as he had for all of Lowery's previous features and one short film. A soundtrack of the score was released by
Milan Records Milan Records is a record label located in Los Angeles, California specializing in film scores and soundtrack albums. In addition, Milan boasts an extensive electronic catalog which features down-tempo, chillout, and eclectic electronic releases ...
on July 7, 2017.


Release

Prior to the film's world premiere at the
Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on January 22, 2017,
A24 A24 is an American independent entertainment company that specializes in film and television production, as well as film distribution. It is based in New York City. A24 was founded in 2012 by Daniel Katz, David Fenkel and John Hodges. Pr ...
acquired its worldwide distribution rights. The company released the film in the United States on July 7, 2017.


Reception


Box office

The film earned $104,030 from four theaters during its opening weekend (an average per-location gross of $26,008), finishing in 26th place at the American box office. By the end of its theatrical run, it had grossed $1,596,371 domestically and $355,312 internationally, for a worldwide total of just under $2million.


Critical response

Peter Debruge of ''
Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' gave the film a positive review, writing: "While Lowery's actual method of delivery may not be scary, it's sure to haunt those who open themselves up to the experience." David Rooney of ''
The Hollywood Reporter ''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade pap ...
'' also gave the film a positive review, writing: "A poetic meditation on time, memory and spiritual connection that is utterly true to its title." Eric Kohn of ''
IndieWire IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus was predominantly independent film, although its coverage has grown to "to include all aspects of Hollyw ...
'' gave the film an "A" rating, calling it "an extraordinary mood piece that amounts to owery'sbest movie yet." Gary Thompson of the ''
Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...
'' gave the film two and a half stars out of four and wrote: "The movie is trippy and almost willfully opaque—all I can say for sure is I left ''A Ghost Story'' feeling full."
Richard Brody Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999. Education Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He first ...
, writing for ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', included ''A Ghost Story'' in his list of the 27 best films of the decade.


Accolades

On September 9, 2017, the film won three awards at the 43rd
Deauville American Film Festival The Deauville American Film Festival (french: Festival du cinéma américain de Deauville, link=no) is a yearly film festival devoted to American cinema, which has taken place since 1975 in Deauville, France. It was established by Lionel Cho ...
: the Revelation Prize, the Critics Prize and the Jury Prize; additionally, David Lowery was nominated for the Grand Special Prize. On October 14, the film won two awards at the
Sitges Film Festival The Sitges Film Festival ( ca, Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic de Catalunya, links=no) is an annual film festival held in Sitges, Spain, specialized in fantasy and horror films, of which it is considered one of the world's foremost in ...
: Best Photography and the Carnet Jove Jury Award. At the
Fantasia Film Festival Fantasia International Film Festival (also known as Fantasia-fest, FanTasia, and Fant-Asia) is a film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. Regularly held in July of each year, it is valued by both hardcore ...
, the film won the Camera Lucida Award.


References


External links

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost Story, A 2017 films 2010s ghost films 2017 drama films American haunted house films American independent films 2017 independent films 2010s supernatural films Films about death Films about grief Films about music and musicians Films set in Dallas Films shot in Dallas Films directed by David Lowery A24 (company) films Films scored by Daniel Hart (musician) American supernatural drama films 2010s American films