By Emilio Frenk
Director: David Lowery
Cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Kenneisha Thompson, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Grover Coulson, McColm Sephas Jr and Kesha.
Rating: Very Good.
David Lowery, writer/director of “Ain´t Them Bodies Saints” joins forces for the second time with Academy Award Winner Casey Aflleck and Academy Award Nominee Rooney Mara in “A Ghost Story” and the results are interesting.
The movie tells the story of C (Casey Affleck) a struggled musician who moves to a suburban house with his wife M (Rooney Mara).
One day C suffers a car accident that will cost him his life and M´s life will take a drastically turn.
Later C will wake up from the morgue in a sheet and will embark in a journey where he will answer questions about existence and life.
In that time, C will try to reconnect with his wife who still misses him and they will both learn to cherish and remember the times they had when they were together.
“ A Ghost Story” is a very interesting concept and an original one. David Lowery wrote a very good screenplay and I liked the fact thattell themes like cherish and enjoy life as much as you can in a different way.
I felt the movie was a full frontal criticism towards the real meaning of life and that is what made it so different.
Lowery´s direction was interesting and both Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara did a very good job, even though Casey Affleck doesn´t speak to much in the movie but he delivers.
Like I mentioned previously, Lowery had the advantage on working with Affleck and Mara previously in “Ain´t Them Bodies Saints” and again both actors delivered convincing performances.
Other factors that made the movie interesting was the cinematography by Andrew Droz Palermo. I liked how he played with the lighting of the film and the constrasts of each of the characters in the film.
The score is also very good and interesting by Daniel Hart, who worked with Lowery in “Ain´t Them Bodies Saints” and in “Pete´s Dragon”.
One of the things that I thought that worked in “A Ghost Story” was the use of Music with Imagery. I felt the movie was very organic and used the music in the moments it had to be used.
In another hand I feel this movie is not for everyone and before you watched be very patient and open since it´s an artistic film.
It has very long shots and yes part of them could have been trimmed down but I understand why Lowery wanted to have that approach.
I am not a big fan of having long shots in film because it takes to much time but here it does work and every shot of the film has a meaning.
For people who really love film this is a very good movie and I give it a huge recommendation to it for it´s visuals, performance and score.