Review of A Ghost Story (2017) by Wayne K — 19 Sep 2017

A Ghost Story is a very difficult film to comment on. The best thing that can be said about is that, when it's finished, it will immediately inspire conversation and musings on life, love, loss, mortality and the nature of time and how futile our efforts and existences really are.

The worst is that it's slow, plodding and chock-full of insufferably long takes. It's a technique used to great effect in many a film, but here it feels like it was done because it's fashionable, because holding on a typical shot longer than usual automatically makes you a bona fide genius, an auteur, a visionary.

That is what may will, and have, said regarding the film, but I found it to be an overall pretentious mess. The rules feel like they're being made up as they're going along, it's so dry, so empty and the couple are not even remotely interesting.

The film makes a critical error in turning Affleck into a personality free ghost so early on, giving us a protagonist we don't even remotely care about or even know. Rooney Mara spends the entire thing looking off into the distance with a disinterested expression, and eats an entire pie in one sitting.

That's one of the films highlights by the way, and the scenes goes on for so long that it becomes comical. The score is an irritation, the film has no dialogue, then lots of dialogue for one scene, then no dialogue again, and it just becomes a tedious exercise in pure nothingness.

It's completely open for interpretation, and will doubtless result in a plethora of fan theories as to what it's about and the message its conveying, but it was an experience I simply couldn't wait to be done with.