Some years ago, during a talk-show interview, Keanu Reeves was asked, somewhat facetiously, what he thinks happens when we die. He replied, “I know that the ones who love us will miss us.” The truth behind this simple, brilliant answer is given a supernatural twist in David Lowery’s poetic meditation on love, loss, and the connection that endures. 

M (Rooney Mara) is widowed when her musician husband C (Casey Affleck) is killed in a car crash. She goes through a long, painful grieving process before moving away from the house they shared and beginning a new chapter of her life. Unbeknownst to her, M, now a ghost and clad in the classic sheet outfit, has been silently observing all this, unable to communicate with her or offer comfort. When she leaves, M lets her go, staying behind and trying over the following decades to retrieve a note she hid just before her departure. 

The idea of a spirit staying earthbound due to unfinished business or an inability to let go has many precedents in literature and film. Jerry Zucker’s Ghost (1990) has a similar idea, for example, but Lowery’s film is in an entirely different register. While M heals and moves on, as she must and as we must when adjusting to the death of a loved one, C, presumably feeling taken before his time, remains tied to her, his desire to simply be with her overriding all other concerns. In this, A Ghost Story is also very much a love story, showing that it is these bonds that endure past death, lingering in the spaces and memories we once shared.

Notes by Kevin Coyne.

Screening as part of our season This Mortal Coil.