Texas is home to some of the best filmmakers in the world. Wes Anderson, the hipster king of quirkiness, who continues to create challenging and interesting cinema ever year, sometimes every other year. Richard Linklater, who like a chameleon can make a movie in any genre and any style with any budget...he’s a heck of a nice guy too. Matthew McConaughey, who isn’t a filmmaker, but who I could not write this piece without mentioning. And now emerges David Lowery from Dallas.
His first independent feature, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, was a mind-blowing arrival that caught many by surprise with its beauty and depth. It was a stellar debut featuring an all-star cast including, Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara.
Later Lowery decided to helm the remake of the Disney film Pete’s Dragon. He took the material and hemmed out a film so startlingly beautiful in its portrayal of family, loneliness, and trauma. Even so, many people failed to notice just how much of a talent he really was due to the source material. Now, he returns with A Ghost Story, a film I find very hard to describe.
It’s a tragic drama about a single couple, yet all of infinity and the universe in one. It’s hauntingly beautiful with no pun intended, and again stars Affleck and Mara as a couple who, before moving out of their first home together, are met with a grim fate. And then…well, you’ll just have to see it.
Lowery is a rare filmmaker under 60 who understands that film is a medium unto itself. It is not filmed theater, or big screen TV, it has a language and vocabulary all its own. And he understands it, or is understanding it more with every film he makes.
