Guardian - 14 January 2018, 09:00 (+ 2295 days 13 hours and 56 minutes) Movies & TV
A man in a white sheet goes cosmic, a Welsh-Zambian newcomer blazes a witchy trail, and a Stephen King adaptation provides scary comfortsWhen any film names itself plainly after a particular genre, chances are it’s not going to do exactly what it says on the tin. So it proves with A Ghost Story (Lionsgate, 12), David Lowery’s beautiful, confounding, time and space-bending tale of romantic devotion and longing – a casually inventive American indie that gradually belies its humble mumblecore beginnings. On the one hand, it delivers on the promise of its title to almost goofily literal effect: not only does leading man Casey Affleck play an actual ghost for the bulk of its running time, but one clad in the old-school white sheet of a million last-minute Halloween getups.It’s a nod to tradition that only underlines how far the film spirals from expectations in all other senses. After outlining a brittle living-world romance between Affleck and Rooney Mara’s midwestern hipsters, the film first jolts us with the former’s sudden death, before springing into an aching study of mutual mourning and loneliness in the dead and living parties alike. (Aptly, it all looks like a forgotten, sun-faded family album: the corners of the frame bevelled throughout, the colours restfully muted.) Lest you start expecting Whoopi Goldberg and Unchained Melody from this setup, all that is a mere prelude to something more elastic and cosmic in scope: a visual and sonic ode to the relentless passage of time. If that sounds affectedly fey, trust in the clear, clean, transporting nature of Lowery’s film-making. Continue reading...