A Ghost Story

David Lowery · 2017 · 92 minutes
Nov. 9 · Regal 1 · 2:00 p.m.

In this singular exploration of legacy, love, loss, and the enormity of existence, a recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to try to reconnect with his bereft wife.

Programmer’s Note

Sailor Bear’s first major feature was Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), a noirish, Texas-based Western starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as lovers on the wrong side of the law. It premiered to strong reviews at Sundance and was picked up for distribution by IFC, which opened new doors for Lowery, including an invitation from Disney to relaunch one of their catalog titles. Lowery’s remake of Pete’s Dragon (2016), cowritten by Toby Halbrooks and starring Robert Redford and Bryce Dallas Howard, is a delightful childhood adventure that gave Lowery a much bigger canvas to work with. (It’s easy to imagine him, a child of the ’80s, having great fun with the car chase at the end.) Lowery’s and Sailor Bear’s relationship with Disney has continued with more recent projects: Peter Pan and Wendy (2023), the animated short An Almost Christmas Story (2024), and two episodes of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (2024).

Two days after completing Pete’s Dragon, Sailor Bear was back at work in Texas, preparing for their next shoot. Lowery had knocked out a draft of the screenplay for what would eventually become A Ghost Story in a single day, and they cobbled together the small budget from their Disney paychecks and friends. Affleck came on board as C, a musician who dies in the opening act, and Mara returned as M, his grieving widow. (Neither character is named.) After the months-long, high-stakes production in New Zealand for Pete’s Dragon, this was a truly grassroots effort. (Behind the scenes footage shows just how grassroots it was.)

And yet, A Ghost Story is a wildly ambitious film. Preoccupied by the timeworn image of a ghost as a white sheet, and suffering from what he described at the time as an “existential crisis,” Lowery crafted a deeply moving and deeply strange movie about grief, marriage, and … all the mysteries of the universe? What begins as a kind of gothic romance about two lovers whose time together is cut tragically short unfolds in jaw-dropping ways, spinning forward and backward through history. To be clear, A Ghost Story is not scary, except perhaps in an existential sense.