I saw David
Lowery’s film A Ghost Story on dvd last weekend. The film was briefly shown in Dutch
cinemas. Sad to say I missed it. I like it very much, this story about an man
who dies and ‘revives ‘ as a ghost, he returns to his home covered by a white sheet
with two holes for the eyes. (Yes, it works for me). A story of grief, time and place, and the survival of stories.
Highly recommendable.
This is a
film not so much about spooks as about deadly loss and the disorientation it
brings. It’s also, parapsychologically speaking, a very modern take on the idea
of the ghost, in which they are, as the paranormal researcher Hans Holzer
proposed, confused, almost showing signs of brain damage. As in all good ghost
movies, the use of sound is important, and Lowery’s regular composer Daniel
Hart contributes a song, I Get Overwhelmed, which sets the sorrowful mood.
A Ghost Story is
also beautifully composed and lit. It is shot in a 1:33 ratio, which means that
we see a box marking out the rectangle of the screen, cutting off the greater
part of the landscape either side, by default piling up the vertical sense of
the images. This works well with the essentially triangular shape of the
phantom (which while sheeted is mostly played by art director David Pink).
To take the idea
of such a ghost, which is a comic-book modification of the 17th-century notion
of spectres wearing grave clothes, is a bold visual move. It is inherently
preposterous: a sheet with holes punched through for eyes. Designed by Annell
Brodeur, the sheet garb was by all accounts difficult to film, which makes
sense when you think about it – this teetering on the verge of a hoodoo
absurdity. Yet absurdity is avoided. The sudden movements of the ghost as it
turns its head, the fabric folds immaculately lit and not quite falling in a
naturalistic fashion, are very suggestive.
The film takes a
huge risk with this central, absurdist image, but makes it work on every level
– effortlessly, gracefully, creating a lyrical exploration of emotional fade
and loss.
Let’s talk
about how you manipulate time in A Ghost Story. Sometimes, it slows down
considerably, like in the pie-eating scene, and then there are huge leaps into
the future. What were the challenges of making that work?
It really
comes down to one’s own internal chronometer and one’s sense of rhythm, and I
really just use my own taste as a barometer when it comes to those things. I
wanted this film to play with time, to utilise time in a very pronounced
fashion. And I wanted that to be relative. I wanted time to move very slowly in
some scenes, and in other scenes for it to fly by in the blink of an eye. Some
of that is in the script. The structure is in the script. Sometimes I would
include the running time of certain scenes in the script just to give the crew
an idea of how long a scene might last. Other times, you discover it on set,
because something you are looking at is not as interesting as you thought it
might be, or sometimes it’s more interesting and you just want to make it work
longer. And then, you take those shots to editing and start to slam them all
together, which is how I like to describe editing; it’s a very messy process
for me, and gradually it gets cleaner and cleaner as you move it along.
As you go
along, you discover the rhythm, the internal rhythm that every movie has and
you try to follow that rhythm. There were scenes that had very long shots that
did not need to be that long. I would cut those scenes in half, or cut them out
entirely. There were other times when a shot that I had filmed on set wasn’t
quite long enough, and I would have to slow it down, or digitally loop it so
that it would last a little bit longer. That is not done through any
mathematical science or anything as exact. There is no scientific method to it.
I just sort of watch the movie and feel out that rhythm and trust my own
internal chronometer.
It’s
interesting because it shows us how we sometimes have to endure the passage of
time, while at other moments, it shows us how fast time can fly...
That’s just
the way I experience time in my life. I think it’s a common phenomenon. The
relative pace of time, and the way that pace changes in the course of our
lives, is so profoundly noticeable. As children, we all feel like Christmas
will never come, or that summer vacation is going to last forever. Time goes by
so slowly when you’re a child, and then, as an adult, it goes by in the blink
of an eye. I wanted this film to encompass both those types of time passage. So
there are times in the movie when the seconds are just ticking by at a glacial
pace, and then there are other times when life and death just go by [swiftly].
Those are both equally true to how I perceive time in my life, and the way I
move through it. I wanted this movie to be reflective of both of those types of
experiences.
With its aspect
ratio, the movie is a square in the middle of a large rectangular screen. It’s
almost as if we’re watching a home movie shot on Super 8. There are a lot of
things reminiscent of home movies A Ghost Story. Was that the desired effect?
There were a
number of reasons why I went with that aspect ratio. Largely, it just felt like
the right aesthetic choice. It felt like it would convey the right type of
feeling to the audience. And certainly, I’m a sucker for nostalgia. It’s a big
part of why I made this movie in general, and I felt that the square aspect
ratio with those square edges would put the audience in a nostalgic state of
mind. It felt like home movies, it felt like photographs, it felt like slide
projectors or View-Masters. We tried to make the images as organic and as
textured and as colorful as we could to help facilitate that. We wanted it to
feel rich, and old and antiquated, in all of the best ways.
I usually
promise no spoilers, but in this case, it’s really hard to talk about the
ending without mentioning the note [left by Rooney Mara’s character in the wall
of the house]. The viewers are left to wonder what was written on that note
that gave closure to the ghost. What made you decide to use that approach for
the ending?
I was very
open to showing what the note said, if we could come up with something that
would actually matter to audiences. The truth is that there is nothing that I
could put there that could be more satisfying than wondering. The wondering and
the questioning are intentionally frustrating, but I think audiences will enjoy
that frustration more than they would enjoy seeing what that note said. I
believe that this one unknown thing is more satisfying than actually finding
out. It’s a mystery that is best left unstated, and I can’t provide any
solution, because I don’t know what it said. Rooney wrote down something on a
piece of paper and folded it up, painted it into the wall, and that note went
down with the house. So, there was something on that piece of paper that she
wrote down, and because she took that movie seriously, and because she cared
about the movie and the characters, I believe she wrote something meaningful,
but I don’t know what it is. She won’t tell me.
So what is the
meaning of Lowery’s melancholic, existential fable? And where does the dessert
come into it?
“It’s been
amazing to hear and read all these theories,” says the writer-director.
“Because I went into it with such specificity and almost a narrow focus. It’s
been a wonderful surprise to hear what audiences get out of the film. “Very
often they are getting out exactly what I intended. But sometimes they bring a
unique perspective that I could never have anticipated. I never say it’s not
about toxic masculinity or about Texas. And voyeurism is certainly a big part
of it. Robert Altman said something once about this phenomenon. Which is that
every single element of a movie is readable intuition. I’ve hung onto that
phrase.”
Lowery, the
eldest of nine children and the son of Mark Lowery, a professor of theology at
the University of Dallas and the former editor-in-chief of the Catholic Social
Science Review, nods when I suggest that there may be a Catholic sensibility
underscoring his new film.
“My mother would
be very happy to hear you say that,” he laughs. “I was definitely raised
Catholic. Very Catholic indeed. I no longer participate in Catholicism. But I
have no doubt that it made a significant impact on me while growing up. I also
suspect that whatever I do for the rest of my life will be thoroughly Catholic
whether I like it or not.”
There are
additional early influences. Aged six, Lowery imagined he saw the ghost of a
young boy at the family farmhouse in Wisconsin, a spectacle he now attributes
to an overactive imagination.
“At the time I
thought I was real,” he recalls. “But looking back I assume I was just
imagining things. I don’t really believe in ghosts, but I am open to the
possibility that they might exist. I guess I’m agnostic on the matter. “If I
did experience a quantifiable supernatural phenomenon I don’t know how it would
change me exactly. But it would certainly alter my perspective on the world.”
Virginia Woolf,
one of Lowery’s favourite authors, provided a rather more tangible influence on
the material. The film opens with a quotation from Woolf’s 1921 short story A
Haunted House. Eagle-eyed viewers will likely spot further references to the
pioneering modernist author.
“Orlando is one
of my favourite novels,” says Lowery. “I love her letters too. She’s my guiding
light. The way she uses time fascinates me. Especially in To the Lighthouse and
Orlando. They play with time in this dynamic and fun way. I love the idea of a
character existing outside of time in the way that Orlando does. “So that was
certainly on my mind when I was writing the screenplay. And I wanted to pay
homage to her in some small regard. And I wondered if she had ever written
about ghosts. So I did a Google search. And found A Haunted House. I couldn’t
believe that I had never read it before.
Another interview with filmmaker David Lowery
Virgina Woolf quote from A haunted House:
“Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting.”
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