A man and his estranged wife, meet after a hiatus. They are on the opposite sides of a glass wall, one of those one-way mirrors. The man can see his wife - and in turn, face all the guilts of his past. The wife can only hear the man, and thus he remains as enigmatic and whimsical as ever. The setting is one of those places where lonely men can go to talk to women of their fantasies, over a phone, separated by the aforementioned glass wall. What other setting can be so unique for a reckoning like this, so intimate yet detached, so close yet so far. What brought the man and the woman there, is secondary. What matters is that they talk, about their past, and about their future. 
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The smartest thing about this movie is its setting. It is post WWII-era Baltimore, at the height of the cold war. Americans fear the Russians and have gigantic secret labs full of variegated weapons research. This draws out to the point of capturing mysterious amphibious creatures from the Amazon to study their anatomy in an effort to amplify human wartime capability. Elsewhere within the city, African-Americans cannot dine in at an American diner and can only get take out food. A white American man is dismissed brutally from the same diner by it's owner for showing traits of homosexuality in a tender moment. In short, the setting, is a city and a world filled with diversity that finds itself lost in a potpourri of discrimination, disparity, fear, and hatred. 

In "A Ghost Story", C loves the home he shares with his wife, M. She isn't so fond of the place and wants to move out and move on. They both get their wish by way of a grave sacrifice. C dies in an accident right outside the house and returns as a ghost draped in a white sheet; to spend the rest of his time (ironically, for a ghost) in the house while M moves on with life. The movie is a sincere study on stillness and change and how they're often counterparts, equally welcome and not, equally scary and relieving. There's a great monologue on the temporariness of life: what do we do when anything we do, doesn't last forever? Do we leave artifacts, imprints of ours for our successors to discover and reminisce over? 

Writer-Director David Lowery wonderfully handles this study, never sermonizing, yet always indulging the viewer sufficiently for these questions to be held on to or to let go and move on, however one may choose to. Both Casey Affleck (C) and Rooney Mara (M) pepper their characters with great tentativeness and vulnerability. The visuals of the movie are quite evocatively done by Andrew Droz Palermo and so is Daniel Hart's music, in combination with external music that makes up for one of the best movie soundtracks of the year. 

To better appreciate the movie: ever wondered whatever happens to our lives' moments, their places, and the people involved, after we move on to others or even beyond. Is life all about a stationary world through which we traipse in all glory or clumsiness? Or is it all a revolving universe around a stationary personal self? It's often said that change is inevitable but what amongst it can we hold on to? When do we let go? 

"A Ghost Story" is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.