As if the macabre specter of a
ghost, albeit in a white sheet with two black eye-holes, were not enough for a
spooky film, David Lowery endeavored to shoot and edit his 2017 film, A Ghost Story, using a relatively
fast 33 frames per second in shooting the ghost moving, and editing without music
so the story-world’s supernatural element would be subtly apparent. Although a
prognosticator delivers a long philosophical monologue at a party somewhere in
the middle of the film, Lowery does not characterize the meaning of the film in
terms of that monologue’s point that the universe will eventually end so a
person should live each day as if it were the last day of one’s life. Of
course, none of us need worry about the universe burning up any time soon, so
from that standpoint we can expect to live full lives without being nihilist on
a daily basis. Fortunately, the meaning of the film, Lowery states in an interview,
is not to live each day as if it is your last day. A more interesting
question is whether the film is an exponent of nihilism as the real,
ontological state of existence, or whether human fulfillment can fill human hollowness
with the fullness of experienced life. Moreover, does a supernatural dimension,
such as a heaven, exist such that human souls can depart from the human
condition and even loved ones while still existing (after death). In other
words, does holiness transcend hollowness? The latter may pertain
more to the phenomenal realm of lived human existence than to the noumenal
realm of things as they are in themselves, and thus what each of us really is.
The full essay is at "A Ghost Story."
