Inner Circle 001
In which we talk about ghosts.
Hello from this side of the moor.
When I was first thinking about the film that would eventually become How To Wash A Body, How To Cleanse A Soul, I put some limitations on myself; to write a film with a small cast in a single location taking place over the course of a couple of hours.
I did this because I thought it would make for a film that I could shoot quickly and cheaply. Cut to now, literally seven years later, where I’m trying to raise £5,000 to make said film. Smart, Lukey. Smart.
Before 2017 (yes, 2017 was 7 years ago, sorry) I probably wouldn’t have really considered an intentionally slow, meditative film set mostly in a single location to be a thing I could ever see myself making but that’s mostly because before 2017 A Ghost Story hadn’t come out.
A Ghost Story (2017, dir. David Lowery) is very close to a perfect film for me. It takes something almost cartoonishly absurd (a literal bedsheet ghost haunts his old house) and treats it with a restrained seriousness that opens up the audience to experience something truly profound.
Ghost stories have always been a way for us to explore the human condition in some way or other, albeit traditionally through a horror lens, but what unfolds here is more of a meditation on time, love, loss, moving on and what it might mean to be remembered after we’re gone (if that even matters in the grand scheme of things).
The titular ghost that haunts this story is moored to a single house location as time stretches and shrinks around it. The ghost observes silently, and we observe the ghost.
Normally when you watch a film, you’re the lone observer. A voyeur lost in their own private world as a story spools out before you, its characters oblivious to your presence. Here, however, there’s another voyeur on screen, he’s doing our job and nobody knows he’s there, so where does that leave us?
Well, we’re invited to lean in and soak up details we might otherwise ignore. Everything has meaning because you’re watching it as it’s being observed and suddenly you’re looking at a woman eat a pie for four and a half unbroken minutes and asking yourself what it says about being a person.
This scene, by the way, is maybe the only thing I knew about the film going in because I’d read reports of walkouts happening during it. So when I went to see this at The Dukes Cinema in Lancaster and people did indeed walk out at this moment I honestly felt so happy. To this day I get a perverse bit of pleasure in seeing people walk out of films I’m really loving. A complete film snob moment, I know, but my own private, internal one.
All this is to say, this is a film that opened my eyes to a different style and pace of films that I’d been aware of but never truly clicked with before then. Self-funded by a Director who’d made a bit of coin through a Disney project and decided his next move should be one of the least commercial ones possible. A quiet, still, meditative treat. Plus it’s got a cameo from Kesha and a scene-stealing monologue by Bonnie Prince Billy so what’s not to love?! C’mon…
If you’re interested, you can currently watch A Ghost Story for free if you get a 7 day free trial of the MGM Channel on Prime TV. Which, yes, is several layers of hoops to jump through but everyone fucking winces when I say they should be buying blu-rays so this is what you’re left with, chump!
Further reading: A Ghost Story: Photographs by Brett Curry (now out of print, but even the link above has some gorgeous behind the scenes photos of the making of the film and are well worth looking at).
Right, that should do it for episode one of whatever this is. Thanks for tuning in. Lemme know if you watch the film or if you’ve already seen it. I’m ready to fight the haters.
If you’re feeling generous, please do share a link to the Kickstarter with anyone you think might be keen to back it. Every new pair of eyes on it really does help the cause.
Remember, that’s SpookyYouTube.com (really).
Til next time.
Luke. x