7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
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 and reconnect with his bereft wife.
Starring: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, McColm Cephas Jr., Kenneisha Thompson, Grover CoulsonDrama | 100% |
Supernatural | 4% |
Romance | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH, Spanish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Note: Guess what? A Ghost Story has a ghost in it! If you don't want even a hint of whose ghost it is, I'd suggest
skipping
the main body of the review and dropping down to the technical portions, below.
With Halloween more or less right around the corner, there’s the opportunity to completely confound some kids who may have taken the lo-fi route
with regard to costumes and just thrown a sheet with eye holes over themselves. “Oh, look, you’re Casey Affleck!” you might be tempted to say,
at
least if you’re a curmudgeonly type who likes to make perhaps obscure cinematic references. A Ghost Story has a rather interesting story
to
tell, one that deals with love, loss, time and memory, but it also exploits a curious and perhaps fatal (no pun intended, given the film’s context)
conceit with regard to the spectral entity portrayed by Affleck for the bulk of the film. In one of the supplements included on this Blu-ray, writer
and
director David Lowery mentions how he had long wanted to make a film about a ghost using only a sheet over the designated actor to indicate that
the perform was indeed depicting a spirit. Even Lowery states he found the idea funny, and my hunch is many viewers will as well, and it’s that
perhaps inherently comic aspect that seems tonally at odds with a film that is otherwise virtually drenched in melancholy. Certain unexplained
aspects also figure into a story that tends to resonate emotionally but which (perhaps like ghosts themselves) defies logic at times. A Ghost
Story has received a lot of critical acclaim, but (from my experience, anyway) it’s split audiences more decisively, with some folks I know who
have seen it calling it an inarguable masterpiece and other folks I know who have seen it calling it one of the most supreme bores they’ve watched
recently. Again, my hunch on how some viewers will respond to A Ghost Story may hinge in great part on how they react to the sight of a
grown man traipsing around in a bedsheet for an hour and half.
A Ghost Story is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and A24 with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1 (and note the old school rounded edges of the frame as well). The deliberately retro Academy ratio enforces the confined nature of the film, and it also helps support detail levels in close-ups, in a film which can otherwise be a bit on the drab side, with undercooked contrast and a kind of monochromatic looking palette. There's some appropriately cool grading going on, even in scenes that might seem to be not suited for it, as in some sunny outdoor material. Occasional special effects aren't especially great looking, but don't seriously distract. A lot of the film is intentionally gauzy, as if the focal ghost is drifting through a half remembered dream, and as such fine detail levels can be a bit on the anemic side. That said, even close-ups of what I'm sure will be an iconic bedsheet offer really good fine detail levels on the weave of the fabric. Even the threads at the edges of the black eyes are often individually discernable.
A Ghost Story has a subtly immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, one that gets occasional jolts from things that go bump in the night to more soothing sounds of Daniel Hart's appropriately elegiac score. The film's long (some might feel interminable) sequences involving the ghost watching untold months and years drift by have an intentional spareness in sound design, and as such surround activity can be on the sporadic side. The film also doesn't have a lot in a traditional dialogue sense, leaving quite a bit of the soundtrack to score and ambient environmental effects.
Here's the thing with A Ghost Story for me: Lowery already provides a really cool visual referent for a spirit in the film's very opening scene, when C glimpses the spectral rainbow climbing up the wall. For me, anyway, the film would have been so much more effective if he had continued to use that glyph as the symbol for the ghost, which could have artfully been woven with point of view shots to clearly depict what was going on. Having someone stumbling around in a sheet is almost unavoidably funny, at least to jaded folks like me, and it instantly distanced me from the film's underlying melancholy. Those more tolerant of the film's central visual conceit may well find this a thought provoking exercise that doesn't have the comedic baggage it might for others, though even those folks may have occasional questions about Lowery's more "arty" proclivities. Technical merits are generally strong, and with caveats duly noted, A Ghost Story comes Recommended.
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