A Ghost Story is a film I can revisit over and over again and fall in love again and again.
The first time I watched it I became obsessed with unravelling it, creating a narrative justification for it all. When it made sense intellectually, I could put it away and move on.
But I couldn’t.
I keep revisiting it. I keep tearing up, not at any particular moment. Just throughout it. The experience is just so emotional.
I couldn’t unpack why until recently. After 10 years in a share house the owner has decided to move back in and kick us out and I realise I’ve never really had a place I call home, or a base, or somewhere I could go back to and feel whole. I still don’t. Home, is temporary.
But something in A Ghost Story makes me feel whole, seeing this plot of land, this building give so much joy and so much heartache but most of become vessel for a world of misguided purpose. Whether it in the future in a board room, in the past, or as a college student doing their best impression of their favourite philosopher.
I grew up living in caravans at a dirt bike track in Alice Springs. At the time it just was what it was and I would avoid bringing girls around because well, my family lived in two caravans with a roof between them and shade cloth as walls. We had to walk 50 metres across rocks to the club room to shower and the kitchen was watered by a 20 litre jug filled up daily with a hose. It was what it was, but for me visiting friends felt, confusing, there was warmth and walls, and television reception and they were chatting up girls on MSN messenger. None of which I had. Home was temporary. And then I broke my back, my parents separated and I moved into a backpacker hostel. Home, was temporary.
That each new house, or caravan, or hospital, or backpacker hostel I have lived in throughout my 35 years living is a chance to rewrite a little piece of my life with the people in it. But home, as a construction, is temporary. However what this movie illuminates is that the moments are forever, the moments last, the moments matter, and really at the end of it all, its all we have.
Home is temporary.
I’ve gotta touch on some film craft of course. The frame size is gorgeously nostalgic without the film ever feeling too twee in its nostalgia. I love a sequence based structure of the narrative, these stories tie in through a theme yet the characters only exist in each particular sequence, we only get a glimpse but the glimpse builds to a whole. When directing this structure of almost separating an episode or a movie into reels, even if not written that way can create a certain energy for the audience. Finding the midpoint in a half hour of TV or the using the act break to your advantage.
Also this - the quietness on set is something I crave so fucking bad. The intimacy with the actors and the shorthand with the crew just settles the set and allow the best performance from everyone.