"A Ghost Story" Starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara is a Hypnotic Elegy to Life's Legacy

Dir/screenwriter David Lowery (b Amer 1980) has reunited his stars Casey Affleck & Rooney Mara from his previous film "Ain't Their Bodies Saints" which received a nomination for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (2013).  Lowery's subdued & haunting film "A Ghost Story" received a nomination for the John Cassavetes Award (2017).   You'd think people would've learned by now from other movies such as "Ghost" (starring Patrick Swayze & Demi Moore) if you're dead, go to the light or you'll be stuck in a hellish purgatory.  Casey & Rooney are young couple in love.  You see them cuddling on the couch in their home & sleeping in bed while connected together.  It's while soundly sleeping & tightly knit they hear a loud noise that rouses them.  Casey bravely ventures first with Rooney wrapped in a sheet close behind.  Oddly, there's no evidence of an intruder or disturbance.  Casey casts one lingering look around before shutting off the light.  The two have been negotiating a  move which Casey hinders with his reluctance for change.  Casey is a musical composer with promising talent. Sequential timing in this languid movie is blurred.  He consents to the move but shortly after, he's killed in a car accident feet from his own driveway.   Rooney braces herself to identify the body in the hospital.  Her pain & incredulity are a disquieting mixture of grief and shock.  She covers Casey's face with the sheet then hurriedly walks away.  We're left in the room with Casey's covered corpse.  Only the audience can observe Casey's sheathed body with only dark slits for eyes move stealthily through the hospital.  Casey's shrouded form halts in front of a wall that opens into a brightly lit aperture.  After a few moments when Casey fails to move towards the undulating light, it quickly enfolds & disappears (big mistake!)   Casey remains shrouded and makes his way back to the home he shared with Rooney where he hovers over her.  In this surreal & stunning film we anguish for the ghost whose expressions we can't see but we know he's shackled within a world he can no longer partake.  A bumptious party goer pontificates on leaving behind a legacy while reveling with other party goers in the home from which Rooney has long since departed and to which Casey is marooned.  This eerie & sombre film is too wonderful and unique for most to realize how rare and special it is.  But, "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute."  (T Wilder)