SNAPSHOT
A ghost (Casey Affleck) silently observes his grieving widow (Rooney Mara) in his beloved home. (official synopsis via Coming Soon)
Losing someone you love is gut-wrenchingly, near world-endingly sad.
There is simply no way, at least at first, to begin to process the enormity of your loss, how you will never ever again enjoy the phsyical presence of that person in your life.
I didn’t truly appreciate that sage truth in its heartstoppingly sad entirety until my father died last year and I came to understand, in a way I hadn’t fully previously, how hard it is to just go on as everyone urges you to do.
Of course, you do, but its criminally hard and David Lowery’s Ghost Story, which star Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as a couple cruelly separated by death, looks like it captures that great sadness and loss, using a particularly idiosyncratic device to do so.
As We Got This Covered correctly observes “The natural first reaction is to giggle, as surely the film can’t expect us to take this low effort ghost seriously” but then it hits you, how utterly affecting Affleck’s ghostly presence is, no matter how comical he might first appear.
Ghost Story is grief profound, raw and real, something those who have the film have confirmed with We Got This Covered noting that “critics [are] breathlessly describing it as ‘powerful and sobering,’ ‘poetic’ and ‘fabulous movie-making.'”
It may not be an easy film to watch, especially if you have lost someone neat and dear to you, but it looks like it will be important, meaningful and rewarding to watch, and may help us all get a little bit closer to learning to live with the vagaries of life … and death.