★★ ½

A Ghost Story is a meditative and typically shifting cinematic poem about love, loss, grief, loss of life, and the issue of letting reminiscences go which are connected to anyplace we name house. This somber, intentionally paced movie, written and directed by David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), will probably convey tears to the eyes of many viewers, whereas producing yawns in others.

Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara, recognized in the long run credit merely as C and M, play a childless, married couple dwelling in a modest ranch home in Texas. He’s a musician and she or he’s his muse. She, for causes by no means made clear, needs to maneuver. He doesn’t. “Why does this house mean so much to you?” she asks in a flashback late within the film. “History,” he replies. About 15 minutes into the movie, C is killed in a automotive crash close to the home. M views his physique within the morgue, recovers it with a white sheet, and leaves. Soon after she departs, C rises from the slab, his physique nonetheless lined with the sheet—solely now it has two holes minimize out for eyes. He wanders again to the rancher, the place he watches M attempt to get on along with her life. Days, weeks, months, maybe even years go till M strikes away. But C stays in the home, which raises an essential query: Why doesn’t C observe M? Why does he select to remain in the home, relatively than observe the one he loves? Since he’s a ghost, one assumes he can go wherever he likes.

No one can see the ghost, however he does often make his presence recognized. He isn’t thrilled when a Hispanic single mother strikes into the home along with her two children, so he flings open the kitchen cupboards and smashes cups, saucers, and plates. It isn’t lengthy till they transfer and a few hipsters transfer in. One of them, performed by Will Oldham, rambles on in regards to the meaninglessness of life and the way all the pieces, whether or not symphonies, songs, books, or homes, received’t endure and can finally be forgotten or destroyed. “You can build your dream house but it won’t mean a thing,” he says. And on and on it goes, typically maddingly so. At one level, C friends via a window and sees a fellow ghost in a neighboring home. They talk telepathically, however we by no means get any perception into who this different spirit is. The closing credit point out the particular person beneath the opposite sheet is pop star Kesha, however you’d by no means know that with out checking.

A Ghost Story would have made an attention-grabbing and, sure, haunting brief movie, however stretched out to 93 minutes it turns into ponderous and repetitive. Scenes go on seemingly eternally. Do we actually want a four-plus-minute shot of M consuming a complete chocolate pie? Or a five-minute shot of C and M snuggling in mattress? The lengthy takes really feel like padding, as do a weird flash-forward and a fair stranger journey again in time that add little to the narrative. Lowery additionally shot the film within the boxy 1.33:1 side ratio, with rounded edges, which considerably resembles an enlarged model of an old style TV display. It’s one other curious selection in a film stuffed with them.

But the primary downside is that, for a film so consumed with reminiscences and the historical past of a spot, we’re given treasured few scenes of C and M dwelling in the home collectively earlier than he dies, which makes it obscure his abiding connection to the place. If you actually need to watch one thing shifting about house, reminiscences, loss, and the influence they’ve on an individual, hunt down the music video for Miranda Lambert’s “The House That Built Me.” It accomplishes extra and plumbs feelings extra deeply in its transient 4 minutes and 12 seconds than Lowery does in 93 minutes. Sometimes much less actually is extra.