Despite usually finding something to like in almost every film I watch, it takes quite a bit for me to absolutely adore a film. There is a set of criteria that a film needs to meet for me to consider it an utter masterpiece, and something that can definitively be called a truly incredible, moving film. A Ghost Story is one of those rare films that isn’t just a masterpiece, it is a soaring triumph of a film that exceeds every expectation and positions itself as one of the most unbelievably brilliant films of the decade, a film that is so incredible in nearly every aspect, creatively and technically. Hyperbole aside, A Ghost Story is a piece of cinematic art, and the exact reason I adore cinema. Original, uniquely moving and just undeniably complex in every way, it is as unforgettable as any film could conceivably be – and yet, it has flown far too low under the radar, and deserves a much larger audience than the arthouse crowd that normally devour this kind of film. A Ghost Story is far more complex than nearly any other film and not in the arrogant over-philosophical way that many independent dramas seem to want to convey so desperately, but in a way that is deeply profound and quite simply impenetrably beautiful.

C (Casey Affleck) and M (Rooney Mara) are a married couple living in a small rural home in Texas. M has bigger ambitions and wants to move. C is attached to the space, and wants to stay. He manages to achieve this desire, albeit in the most tragic of circumstances – he is killed in a car accident just outside his home. However (as this film’s title suggests), he returns from the realm of death as a spirit, clad in a white sheet, and makes his way back to the house, where he watches as his wife grieves over his death, not knowing that her beloved husband is almost literally within her reach. However, the central message of this film is that life goes on, and M starts to overcome her grief and continue on with her life, eventually moving out of the home – yet the ghost of C is permanently bound to the location and finds himself in a spiritual purgatory, trapped between life and death. He watches as the decades elapse until the humble home is converted into a skyscraper in a bustling metropolis of the future, where his wife is most certainly also entered into the realm of death, never to be reunited with her husband (or so it seems).

A Ghost Story is the exact kind of film I am always so fearful of writing about, for the most unusual reason – it is a film that is so overwhelmingly complex in its panoply of themes and messages, and it is almost overwhelmingly complex. It would be a challenge to actually decide on any particular thematic thread of A Ghost Story and to write something meaningful and thorough, as it is entirely possible that I will most certainly leave something important out. But it is also the kind of film I want to ramble on about endlessly, because it contains an abundance of meaning, and it makes some truly extraordinary statements about love, loss and existence as a whole, delivering these ideas in a truly unforgettable and dynamic way, where the thought of this film and what it attempts to convey lingers on your mind for days, creating an irregretably indelible meditative stain on the mind of the audience, and leaving with feelings of exhiliration and nostalgia, and perhaps even pondering their own life. Speaking solely on the personal level, A Ghost Story rendered me entirely speechless, and it is a film that I still have trouble talking about – not because it is a film I do not necessarily do not want to talk about, but rather because I simply cannot speak about it – there is just far too much to say. I take this as the film’s highest merit – there is not any conceivable way to fully articulate the multitudinous thoughts that assimilate from A Ghost Story into the audience. There is a song in A Ghost Story that serves to be a central motif, titled “I Get Overwhelmed”, and perhaps that is an extremely apt way to convey my thoughts on this film, and believe me when I say that I mean that with the most sincere and praise that cannot be said to be anything less than on the celestial level.

Perhaps the best place to start is to talk about the most conventional aspect of the film – the cinematic technique and visual aesthetic. Without any exaggeration, A Ghost Story is one of the most stunningly beautiful films I have ever seen, with precise detail added to the way in which this film was made. The cinematography (lensed by Andrew Droz Palermo, someone who has not received much attention, but will most likely ascend to great acclaim if A Ghost Story is anything to go by) is staggering in its utter beauty. Filmed in an unconventional aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is as much an aesthetic choice as it is a narrative choice (it emphasizes the theme of entrapment and being contained with a particular space that is impossible to escape from), it is a truly uncompromisingly complex and beautiful film, and the unique approach to representing this story visually only accentuated the sheer humble grandiosity of the story. Despite clearly being made on a shoe-string budget, the film is still extremely captivating, and it is capable of conveying its grave and bleak message through exceptionally breathtaking imagery that is as beautiful as it is melancholic. David Lowery is not necessarily a newcomer, but he has yet to receive the breakthrough that his talents clearly deserve, and the combination of the astonishing narrative and the astounding visual aesthetic, as clearly displayed through his work on A Ghost Story will doubtlessly lead him to acquire the precise acclaim he deserves.

A Ghost Story is a film that adheres to the imperative rule of the narrative: it is far better to show rather than to tell. It has its roots heavily in silent cinema, most particularly in terms of the visual aesthetic, but even in the progression of the narrative. The majority of the film is without dialogue, with much of the talking taking place in flashbacks to the past, when C was still alive and their marriage was flawed but lovingly passionate for the most part. This is a film that embraces the silence of death in a way that is deafening and overt. There is a sequence midway through the film where Mara’s character listens to the aforementioned song “I Get Overwhelmed”, a beautiful song in its own right (written specifically for A Ghost Story, but one that also works as a haunting piece of music independently), with the heartbreaking and profound lyrics breaking the silence of an otherwise very quiet film that meditates on life and loss in such a way that is is unbearably beautiful and heartbreakingly moving. The score works with the film in highlighting the small and intricate nuances of the storyline, acting as the voice of this film when actual articulable words will not suffice. The composer of the music for A Ghost Story, Daniel Hart, is also a relative newcomer in terms of mainstream films, and he has yet to achieve wide success, but he undoubtedly will, as A Ghost Story uses its hauntingly beautiful score to astonishing effect.

How is it possible that an actor is able to give a deeply moving performance where their role calls for them to spend the majority of the film entirely silent, clad in a white sheet to evoke images of the archetypal ghost figure from inoffensive, tame representations of restless spirits? While I will not be hyperbolic and proclaim A Ghost Story as Casey Affleck’s best performance (it certainly is one of his very best, however), it is a film that granted Affleck the opportunity to use his undeniably strong aura to create a tragic protagonist who watches as the memory of who he was fading away until he is likely entirely forgotten, leaving behind a meagre legacy. The physicality of this performance far exceeds the surface requirements – it is not a performance whereby the only task the actor needs to perform is that of wearing a white sheet – the subtle physicality of the performance, as well as slight alterations to the film in terms of the frame-rate to accentuate the movement to emphasize the supernatural element without distracting from the central theme, creates something truly hypnotic. Affleck’s performance in A Ghost Story should not be overlooked in terms of brilliance – the emotional resonance found in the seemingly most inconsequential movements or of emotive expressiveness are profoundly effective and serve this film exceptionally well. Very few films are able to take such an absurd concept as a man wearing a white sheet to represent his ghost-like state, and turn it into something so unimpeachably moving and profoundly meaningful.

A Ghost Story is a film about two people, and while the focal point of the film is obviously Affleck, as he does play what we can consider to be the titular character (the matter of whether the “ghost” in the title refers to him particularly, or to the general concept of being a ghost and watching your legacy deterioriate while those who loved you in life leave you after death and move on with their lives, is still up for debate), Rooney Mara is also outstanding, and her portrayal of the young widow, broken and beaten by the sudden death of her husband, is nothing short of dumbfounding and startlingly realistic. Her stoic exterior at the sight of her husband’s corpse in the morgue is juxtaposed with moments of sincere grief, where the character navigates the well-worn cliches of the stages of loss, and we watch as she comes to terms with the death of her husband and the way in which she realizes that she needs to move on. It is a truly honest and raw depiction of trauma, an experience that is often belated and causes irrational behavior and existential crises (what is known as the “acting out” stage in terms of trauma theory), but will hopefully, after a short while, result in an acceptance of the trauma, and an attempt to move on without erasing the memory of the tragedy entirely (what is known as the “working through” stage). I don’t necessarily want to explain the various correlations between this film and academic approaches to understanding trauma, but it is vital to note the way in which this film approaches trauma after a sudden tragedy may not be representative of how every individual reacts, but rather a representation of what trauma can do to, both to the deceased and to the surviving. Mara is deeply moving and emotionally-stirring, and she is the heart and soul of the film, imbuing it with the despair and heartbreak, and ultimately the glimmer of hope that allows it to end on the ambiguous and melancholic note that leaves the audience exhilarated and emotionally-drained, in the best way possible.

A Ghost Story is a film about loss, which is about as accurately reductive as one can get without delving too deeply into the multitude of complex themes present within this film. It is a film about what happens when we lose someone who we truly love, and how one has to come to terms with the fact that their beloved is not a tangible part of their life any longer, yet their memory does still linger as some sort of presence (what trauma theorists have named “the present absent”). This is not an entirely new concept, and countless other pieces of cinema, music, and literature have tackled this doleful, yet tragically real, idea. Death is an industry, and the history of art is defined by its obsession with death. Yet, not too many films are as subversive and original as A Ghost Story, and while something like the massively-popular romantic film Ghost is a well-loved (and deeply sentimental) meditation on similar themes, A Ghost Story goes above and beyond in exploring the nature of loss, as told from the perspective of the departed individual, where the audience is privy to their own crises and insecurities as they learn that their death may have been tragic, but it did not bring the world to the halting stop that everyone believes it will to an extent. A Ghost Story builds its tragic premise not on the death of the main character, but the metamorphosis of space – where the home goes from a sanctuary where he is able to be close to his wife and be a presence in her life, even if she is tragically unaware of it, to a metaphorical prison, the aforementioned purgatory, where he is trapped, bound to be a part of that space, which grows increasingly void of what made it the home he built with his wife. It is a frustratingly bleak film, merely for the fact that the audience emphasizes with the plight and heartbreak of both main characters, and understand that their actions were simply unavoidable, as difficult as it is to admit.

The effortless way in which A Ghost Story weaves through time and space is simply extraordinary. The film is initially excruciatingly slow, and it is consistently paced at such a rate that it becomes meditative and allows the audience to ponder certain aspects of the film in a way that we would not be allowed to in a more conventionally-paced film. Yet, even in its slow-paced nature, it is still innovative in how it navigates time. Decades take place over the course of a few minutes, and centuries effortlessly pass, all while the main character watches in hopeless despair, realizing that as time goes on, the further he strays from his beloved wife, the ultimate irony as his fate is to remain stagnant physically while yearning to move forward. A Ghost Story makes some sweeping statements about existence, with a particularly poignant scene seeing Will Oldham (also known as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, a great indie folk musician) explain the arrogance of attempting to leave legacies behind, and how everything will perish eventually. It is an agnostic film – it never attempts to convey the idea that it understands the nature of the world, or of the presence of some higher power or celestial plane of existence, as well as the metaphysical aspects of the universe, while still providing some enlightening and fascinating commentary on such concepts. It is a film that never fraudulently states that it may have answers, and it often serves to complicate the very questions that it sets out to convey, but it does so in a way that doesn’t require any resolution, and the ending, while ambiguous, is still deeply moving and the precise conclusion that A Ghost Story needed – complex but beautifully profound.

I adored A Ghost Story, and it moved me consistently throughout. A deeply complex and beautiful representation of loss and the process of dealing with trauma and moving on, conveyed in a manner that is mesmerizing and undeniably wonderful. It is tragic without ever being depressing, and it is emotional without ever making use of false sentimentality. Featuring a pair of extraordinary performances by two of the finest actors working today, who commit excessively to conveying the true love and the bitter loss shared between their characters. Technically and creatively, A Ghost Story is hypnotic and aesthetically stimulating and etches its unique imagery onto the mind of the viewer with its complex and original approach to representing the conceptual narrative onto the distinctive visual product. In short, A Ghost Story is an extraordinary masterpiece, a film that is challenging and difficult to watch at times, because of its myriad of complexities that define it. A Ghost Story is an absolute masterpiece, and while it does have small flaws (not even notable enough to mention), it is otherwise an incredible experience and certainly one of the most mesmerizing films of the year, and perhaps of the last few years. Simply extraordinary.