A man dies and comes back to his house as a ghost (a sheet with 2 eye-holes). He watches his wife grieve, move on and eventually leave, while time speeds past him without mercy. David Lowery's film thinks about grief, how nothing lasts and the human need to leave a mark. It is told in a nearly square 1.33:1 frame with the patience of a painting.
A Ghost Story is a 2017 drama, fantasy and romance film directed by David Lowery. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (1 sound, 3 narrative and 1 cinematography), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Stalker uses several of the same techniques.
Removing music, background sound or dialogue from a moment where most films would fill it. The quiet forces you to sit with what is on screen.
How this film uses it
Lowery takes out music and dialogue for long stretches. The ghost just watches and the house just stands there. The silence becomes a weight, and it presses you into the same waiting the ghost has to endure.
Where to see it
The pie-eating sequence. It is an unbroken take of about 4 and a half minutes in silence, and it manages to be comic and painful at once. It is fairly extraordinary to sit through.
Watching events from a measured distance with no swelling music, tear-jerking close-ups or showy camera moves. The film trusts what happens to carry the weight on its own.
How this film uses it
The camera watches M grieve, date, move out and disappear with the same detached patience the ghost has. It never cuts to underline a moment and never brings in music to tell you what to feel.
Where to see it
The montage of the house's historical inhabitants. Each one is watched and then gone, and time passes as neutrally as a geological record.
Returning to the same physical object again and again until it means more than what it is. It moves the plot and also stands for the film's main ideas.
How this film uses it
The note M leaves in the wall crack is the emotional center of the film. C spends the entire runtime trying to reach it. When it is finally read, its contents pretty much are what the film has to say about being remembered.
Where to see it
C digging at the wall crack. He tries again and again to get the note out and keeps getting frustrated. It is the main action of the film and its most devastating image.
Running the film longer than its genre normally needs, on purpose. The extra time lets you live with the characters, so the emotional payoff feels in proportion to the wait.
How this film uses it
The film is 92 minutes and feels longer. Lowery holds every shot past the point of comfort. You experience time the way the ghost does: shapeless, unending and broken up only by other people's lives passing through.
Where to see it
The time-acceleration sequence. Decades of the house's history go by in a matter of minutes, and then time slows down again. Lowery uses that change of speed to make you feel his point.
Shooting straight down on a scene from above. The view flattens the space into shapes, makes people look small and can feel like a god or security camera watching.
How this film uses it
Lowery mostly uses the 1.33:1 frame to box in what is inside it, so it shows fairly little. Now and then, he shoots C under the sheet in the house from directly overhead. Those shots are absurd and tender at once, and precisely composed.
Where to see it
The overhead shots of the sheeted ghost in empty rooms. He stands there small and still, and the framing is beautiful enough to turn grief into geometry.
Questions
A Ghost Story: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does A Ghost Story use?
CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in A Ghost Story (2017): Strategic Silence, Observational Restraint, Symbolic Object, Slow Build Runtime and Overhead Composition.
Who directed A Ghost Story?
David Lowery directed A Ghost Story, released in 2017. CineCode also covers Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013), Pete's Dragon (2016), The Old Man & the Gun (2018), The Green Knight (2021), Peter Pan & Wendy (2023).
What films are similar to A Ghost Story?
Films that share techniques with A Ghost Story include Stalker (1979), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Andrei Rublev (1966), Tokyo Story (1953).
