“A Ghost Story” taught me that it’s okay to be sad

Every now and then, I have the incredible experience of watching a film that happens to align perfectly with what I need in my life at that exact moment. Whether it’s through a lucky guess or sheer coincidence, some of my most cherished life experiences have been when I’ve discovered films which embody all the feelings that are circulating around me during that time, or touch on concepts that are inescapable in my head.

I could talk about a large handful of these moments, but I want to specifically wind the clocks back to mid 2022, to the night where I started letting myself explore my darker feelings without the fear that they would consume me. It was the night that I watched David Lowery’s “A Ghost Story”.

Leading up to this experience, I was still reeling from all of the anxiety brought on during the pandemic. Staying positive was such an uphill battle that I was using movies more as a serotonin pill than pieces of art. My criteria for choosing a film to watch would be based on how peaceful it was, or how constructive and uplifting the contents where. During this time I recognised that a great deal of films that I wanted to watch due to their nuance or their craft where simply too downbeat for me to handle. I started to forget what the point of those films where. Nonetheless, as I gradually started finding my feet through a great deal of introspection (and therapy), I knew that I was robbing myself of experiencing valuable artistry if I only explored easy cinema. So I had to knuckle down and take a leap.

I was already familiar with David Lowery at this stage. His 2013 contemporary western romance, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”, feels about as close to the grounded spirituality of early Terrence Malick as anyone could get. Even his live action remake of Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” had a strong midwestern heart beating at its centre. So naturally, hearing all of the buzz surrounding “A Ghost Story”, it was an obvious choice.

A Ghost Story is often more like a guided mediation than a traditional movie. Many moments play out in long takes where we are so understimulated that we start becoming fascinated with the little details and textures of each scene. We have enough time for our eyes to wander over to the curtains flowing in the wind, or the way a character adjusts their shoulders, all without missing vital storytelling. Because the key is that, according to David Lowery, this atmosphere which invites you to rest is a significant part of the storytelling. It becomes clear as an audience member very early on in the film. We don’t spend a lot of time with Casey Affleck as our protagonist before he is killed, leaving Rooney Mara as his partner to grieve in the quiet slow moving way that one does in real life, while the white sheet ghost that once was Casey Affleck grieves in his own way. Time gradually becomes a more abstract concept as this ghost reminisces on the life he once lived, and glimpses into the lives of others that inhabited his space.

So in different hands this movie would’ve felt like it took the typical beats of a haunted house movie but set it from the perspective of the ghost rather than the family who just moved in from the big city. But the movie is far more gentle then that. It recognises that during grief time can freeze for us, as we look back and dream forward. Sometimes to get through these moments it can be helpful to escape into something that feels like the furthest thing from grief, which may lead us to sports, or sex, or to a Paddington movie marathon. But buried feelings can start to become inner demons, and that’s when they need to be given an exorcism, and all that takes is acknowledging them, and letting them overtake us just for a little while until those feelings have had enough. They don’t exactly disappear, but they become a little more respectful of their host.

If it’s not clear by now, I’m not going to focus on breaking down the specific beats of this film. It is a gorgeously shot, atmospheric, and intimate film that details what we value in life, and how not only people move on but the whole universe moves on. The film gains incredible mileage with an near wordless main character, and it balances its slow pace with just the right amount of thrilling scenes. But I wasn’t trying to understand it on an intellectual level. I’ve seen people discuss the specifics of the ending and what was tangibly going on, but for me I have no interest in that because tonally it felt perfect. There is a structure which is deceptively air-tight, yet I believe it’s meant to be seen far more from the heart than from the mind. And with a film that is so sincere, I can look at these images and not only accept them, but fully go the emotional distance with them. Arguably, the novelty of a guy in the “kids Halloween costume” version of a ghost gives these images even more emotion.

I didn’t walk away from this movie happy, and though I felt that I was given a reminder that “processing emotions” is not an automatic bodily function, I didn’t feel a large mental shift either. But what I did feel was a safety to enter into these spaces. I wasn’t calculating what music to listen to or what movie to watch as an attempt to self medicate, because I didn’t feel threatened anymore. I still had fears and sadness, because I’m a human being. But now, I wasn’t hiding from that.

Art can allow us to laugh in spite of our sadness, or believe in love despite rejection. We can marvel at the craft and idolise the celebrities, but we can also face our fears. We can remind ourselves of how broken we are, acknowledge all of our shortcomings, and at the end of it we’ll see that it’s okay. It's difficult to feel sometimes, and it’s even difficult to know what we need to feel in the first place. But art can take us to the places that we need to go. It's not always pleasant, but it's cleansing us, and we come out stronger, and more alive. That's the beauty of any art, and I realise that now.

Thanks David.