As if the macabre specter of a
ghost, albeit in a white sheet with two black eye-holes, were not enough for a
spooky film, David Lowery endeavored to shoot and edit his 2017 film, A Ghost Story, using a relatively
fast 33 frames per second in shooting the ghost moving, and editing without music
so the story-world’s supernatural element would be subtly apparent. Although a
prognosticator delivers a long philosophical monologue at a party somewhere in
the middle of the film, Lowery does not characterize the meaning of the film in
terms of that monologue’s point that the universe will eventually end so a
person should live each day as if it were the last day of one’s life. Of
course, none of us need worry about the universe burning up any time soon, so
from that standpoint we can expect to live full lives without being nihilist on
a daily basis. Fortunately, the meaning of the film, Lowery states in an interview,
is not to live each day as if it is your last day. A more interesting
question is whether the film is an exponent of nihilism as the real,
ontological state of existence, or whether human fulfillment can fill human hollowness
with the fullness of experienced life. Moreover, does a supernatural dimension,
such as a heaven, exist such that human souls can depart from the human
condition and even loved ones while still existing (after death). In other
words, does holiness transcend hollowness? The latter may pertain
more to the phenomenal realm of lived human existence than to the noumenal
realm of things as they are in themselves, and thus what each of us really is.
The film’s plot centers around
a young married couple, unnamed, played by Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. The
husband dies early on in the film in a car-crash in front of the couple’s house
in the country. He bypasses going to
heaven and instead returns to their house as a ghost. His widow does not lose
time in moving out, however, and it is clear from his anger (as a ghost!) that he
is not at all happy about her leaving. Eventually, he gets the message,
literally and figuratively, that she will never return. Not showing the crash—only
smoke from his car leading the camera-shot slowly to his head resting on the
steering wheel—or the funeral singles Lowery out as a film-maker who thinks
outside the box in movie-making rather doing things the usual, formulaic way; there
have certainly been too many of those movies. Relatedly, the philosophical
dimension that he brought to the film goes beyond even what he consciously
intended, and is in sync with his efforts to subtly convey the atmosphere of
the film.
For example, in subtly elongating
camera shots at the end of a few scenes and thus holding the viewers to a fixed
picture within which nothing is happening, Lowery makes us uncomfortable because
he breaks the “rule” on camera-shot length, which on average had been getting shorter
perhaps to appease the proclivity of audiences from the mid-1970s for titillating,
quick-action disaster flicks as if they were displays of fireworks in constant
finale. Lowery challenges audiences to “sit still,” which, if it triggers psychological
discomfort, is the fault of the viewers rather than the filmmaker. This was not
Lowery’s intent, however. Rather, holding a camera-shot at the end of a scene
long enough for the holding itself to become transparent to viewers allows them
to feel the emptiness and lonely isolation of Rooney Mara’s character in the house.
Perhaps that her husband, while alive, is emotionally stunted or unavailable
contributes to her day-to-day dreariness. The stationary shots also point a
spotlight on time itself, not only as it is perceived by the bored wife, but
also that time is different for a ghost than for us. Both the young wife’s loneliness
and the ghost’s expansive sense of time can be thought of as nihilist. Her
boredom itself can be expected to feel like emptiness. Regarding the ghost,
from our standpoint, the length of time that the ghost stays in the house, even
far into the future and going into the past, would be intolerable. Although the
ghost may experience the long expanse of time spent in the house, especially
when it is empty, as fleeting, from our standpoint so much time without any
action would be intolerable. Likewise, movie-viewers looking at a very long,
non-moving camera shot of a scene in which nothing is moving may feel a sense
of suspended animation, as if becoming were necessary for being
and so just being without becoming is merely nihilist nothingness.
A narrative must have a strong sense of becoming or people will lose interest in
following the story and move on to do something else. We are doers even
if our very being is not based in functionalism.
To the ghosts in the film, time
not only is perceived differently, but also is fundamentally different
in that time-travel is possible. Even in filming the husband-ghost at a different
film-speed so to show a supernatural quality to what otherwise looks like a child’s
Halloween ghost-costume, Lowerly didn’t fully grasp the implication that time itself
is different to a ghost. This idea, Lowery said, “plays into the thematic parts
of the movie so thoroughly, I should have realized that on set. I’m always
surprised at how many of these things are just completely—there are amazing
details in every movie that you would expect to be conscious decision, but are
purely happy accidents and unconscious inspiration.”[1]
Such inspiration applies here to a director’s own thinking on philosophy—in the
case, of time—applied to his film. Philosophically, a different metaphysic has
implications for time itself as well as how it is perceived. Accordingly, a
philosophical analysis of a film can and should go beyond a filmmaker’s own
intentions and even thinking on philosophy as it bears on the film. Because the
story-world of a film, whether in a director’s head or on the screen, is
wholistic in supporting a narrative, everything that contributes to philosophy in
a film may not be consciously thought out by a film’s filmmakers and yet be
valid.
By philosophy, I do not have
in mind mere (i.e., unphilosophical) psychology, such as applies to characters
in a film. For example, the husband-ghost in the film is only rarely a doer; he
periodically “plays” with the lights, pounds on a piano when he goes back in
time by falling off a skyscraper in the future, and throws dishes on the floor
of the kitchen to scare off the new family that moves in after his widow moves
out. Even though he is in a supernatural dimension that is separate from our mundane
dimension, the ghost can have physical, or empirical impact in terms of
physics. We can thus go beyond the fact that ghosts can apparently feel emotion
in the film to grasp the metaphysical relationship between the realm of ghosts
and of living people.
Going further, perhaps the
rareness of the ghost’s functionality empirically is related to why time is different
for the ghost. Doing, or function, hardly captures what it is for a
ghost in the film to exist. Functionalism falls short in capturing
existentialism. The very human notion of living so to work rather than working
so to live is refuted, or simply does not apply to ghosts in this film because
they spend so much time “standing” around even if the passage of so much time eludes
their notice because time passes differently for ghosts. Time may pass quickly
when we are having fun (or are busy at work), but for ghosts in the film, the speed
of time may be different, as well as the ability to change time-frames (i.e., jump
far into the future instantly and then go back in the past). That we easily get
bored, even when a camera-shot is held longer than usually to end a scene, does
not necessarily mean that the husband-ghost was bored in the empty house
because of the sheer amount of time involved. Yet from our standpoint, we posit
boredom onto the ghost because it is difficult for us to get beyond our vantage
point to grasp the otherness of another. Feeling like life is empty—that it is
really nothingness—may be partly why the wife/widow perceives days going by so slowly;
such a sense of nihilism may even result in suicide, which, absent any heaven
or hell, can be thought of as a fast track to nihilism sans even one’s
own being, or existence. Suicide obviously does not apply to ghosts as
they are already dead (yet they seem to feel emotions, have intentions, and can
even throw dishes!). Existence after death may be an oxymoron.
In addition to existentialism
(ontology), however, philosophy of religion and even a bit of theology makes
its way into the film, for we (and the ghost) get a glimpse of heaven, or at
least its gateway. This has major implications for the nihilist, dank atmosphere
that runs throughout the film and thus seems absolute but is actually
not foundational to human existence. A few minutes after getting up from the
physical body in the hospital’s morgue, the ghost walks down a hall and pauses upon
seeing a brief opening to heaven, a portal that is represented as a very bright,
home-film-screen-sized square of light that opens momentarily on a wall. The
ghost passes on heaven, and instead heads to the house, presumably to be with
his widow. Although not explicitly or even implicitly linked, that heaven
exists relativizes the isolation of the wife/widow, whose nihilism may not have
the last word in her existence. That the portal opens as if “on cue” suggests
furthermore that some “intelligence” or being having intention and thus a will
exists as a common denominator with respect to the realms of ghosts and living
persons. Already in the film, the widow, whose desire to move is clear at the film’s
beginning, hires movers, packs up, and drives away, with her satisfied facial
expression being shown in the translucent sunlight. She is headed to a brighter
future and will not miss that house, and maybe not even her dead husband for
long as he had evinced the emotional absence of a ghost even during the
marriage. The husband’s ghost is not happy about her decision to move away, but
it is only when he finally opens a note that she has sealed in wood paneling in
the house that he “gives up the ghost,” and the sheet collapses. The ghost next
door had just done the same thing when that ghost finally realized that the
person being waiting for would never return, for the house had just been torn
down. Therefore, the note left by the widow was probably one of closure—of saying
farewell to the house, and thus to the ghost in it. Indeed, she would never be
back; we know this because the ghost remains in the house far into the future,
beyond even the time when the house is torn down and is replaced by a skyrise
office building. We can conclude that the continued existence of ghosts here
among the living, rather than being in heaven, is predicated on the hope of continuing
on with a loved one. But lest it be forgotten, wedding vows include the words, till
death do us part. The husband-ghost is suddenly faced with having to accept
the finality of the end of a relationship, and thus he “gives up the ghost” and
presumably takes heaven up on its offer. In reading the note, he lets go of the
hope he has had in seeing her again, but the resulting nihilism may be replaced
with the fullness of heaven. The ghost presumably finds peace in finally accepting
the finality of the end of his relationship with his wife (now widow). If so,
then nihilism does not have the last word not only for his widow, who may remarry
but has at least moved on from the emotional isolation that she has known in
that old house with her husband, but also for the ghost, who has finally given
up the ghost by accepting the finality of a relationship that wasn’t very intimate
anyway.
1. Tasha
Robinson, “A
Ghost Story Director David Lowery on How Technology Fixed His Lonely Ghost,”
The Verge (theverge.com), July 14, 2017 (accessed July 22, 2026).
