A Ghost Story

Here is a mesmerizing film, a story wherein nothing happens while everything is happening. I can't help but be reminded of the Henry James classic, The Turn of the Screw--and, therefore, this is my kind of ghost story. To say that it is boring would be an understatement, just as to say so would be to fully expose the fact that you've failed to comprehend the tale. Or perhaps you have simply not been around very many ghosts. This is a relentlessly quiet, languishing, often motionless, nearly catatonic cataloging of irredeemable loss played out on the stage of irrepressible life and the resplendency of love. It is a story told through motion and image, color and nuance, protracted periods of stillness interrupted by suddenly dismantled settings, as violently final as life itself. There is very, very little in the way of dialog, yet the silence, like a picture, is often worth a thousand words. There is nothing scary about this movie. Ghosts, after all--real ghosts--aren't scary. They are sad. They are enormously, tragically sad. Don't watch this if you don't have the time. Get the flu first, as I have done, such that you're too weary to move from your chair anyway and are already given to staring into space. And then, when you've finished, preferably after dark, go for a walk, notice all the moving things, listen to the voices on the street corner, through the open window, the teeming proof of the presence of life. Listen, and be silent. Mourn, and be glad.