A Ghost Story

Projector
Directed by David Bowery
Starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara

With one scene starring the director himself

I love the square format and the curved edges of this film, with a softness around the edges and some scenes have a romantic vignette.

C and M, Affleck and Mara, act as husband and wife respectively in the film. They live in this big house in the middle of forests. Childless, we see how they are C composes music. Next we see M dragging out a large trunk to dump along the road. I think they might be moving. M shared how whenever she moves, she would place a note in that house. So that a part of her remained in that house. Just like how when we cross paths, a bit of ourselves get left behind.

One night, presumably after making love, they hear a loud thump outside in the living room. They check out but nothing is there. C died in a car crash the next day, at the curb just before turning into their garage.

M stares at the cloth in the mortuary. C wakes up as a ghost, where he walks around in a white cloth. He was supposed to go to the light, represented by a lit portal, but misses the chance. Everything else after is shot through the eyes of the ghost, but no one else in real life can see him. I'm glad C died because he mumbles most of the way when he was alive. At least now he is limited to acting behind a white sheet. He goes home, to see his wife. His wife just received this pie but a kind neighbour/friend who let herself in. For five minutes we see her dumping pie into her body. Painstaking. She pukes.

This grief goes on for many scenes. We rehash what happened earlier - she wants to move out but he doesn't want to. On rainy days she looks out of the window, lost in time.

We see this on repeat, where she goes to work everyday and gets better. In ghost world, their time is fast but in actual world, it is days and weeks. One day when she was out, C spots a ghost in the opposite house. They wave. She is waiting for someone but forgot who she is waiting for. Sometimes memories elude me just like that.

One day M returns with a new man. C is jealous and turns poltergeist by making the lights flicker and books fall. We rehash how he composed this beautiful song for her, and she didn't give any comments at all because it was about them. He was so disappointed.

She listened to this soundtrack, plugged in on the floor, inches away from C, the ghost. She moves out because she wants to start afresh. Before she goes, she repaints the house and tucks a note in between the creaks and paints over.

C frantically tries to remove the paint. Before he could finish, a Hispanic single-mom with a boy and girl of elementary/preschool age move in. C sees them in their daily routine - play piano, feast, decorate the Christmas tree. C one day decides to enter the children's room. The boy can see him and screams. The next day C wrecks the kitchen by dumping plates etc. The mom does not seem to see C but can sense him, just like the younger daughter. They move.

C tries to remove the paint once again. Before he can succeed, a hipster college crowd moved in with house party. One bald hipster reminiscences about existential questions - about humanity and how it is hopeful if there could be chords of e.g. Beethoven and music/art/culture which moves the soul. He goes on to say how humanity tries so hard to leave a print but it is all for nothing. C gets pissed and caused the light to flicker because it reminds him of his past as a struggling artist to get recognition, fame and compose great music.

The house is abandoned again. Just as C was about to get the note, a bulldozer demolished the house. C and neighbour ghost stand on top of the debris. Female ghost says looks like they are not coming back and promptly disappears, leaving her cloth with light pink prints. A futuristic, high rise building is built. C goes to the roof and commits suicide by jumping.

He wakes into medieval time with horse carriage. This nomadic family stay under the carriage and next morning, they are outside getting ready to move. Little girl writes something and placed it below a large rock. Next second, they are murdered by Red Indians, presumably from the bows and arrows. I thought he would go look for the note under the rock. No time. We see the family decomposing to skeletons and in this place his current house gets built.

C sees how he and his wife move in. One night in bed, C tells M he is ready to move out. C the ghost hears this and sat down by the piano, because he is pissed and doesn't want to go. This was how they heard the loud thump previously.

C died and M is moving out. There are two ghosts in this space now, composed very well with M in the middle. In this time loop, C the first ghost is now able to pull out the note. He reads in and before the camera pans to the message, he disappears. Cloth sinks down empty. In my mind I saw "Goodbye" written. But this cliffhanger was just bugging me. What did M write such that C got reprieve and was able to find peace?

I guess most of what I hold on to may be meaningless to most others.