“A Ghost Story,” The “Fake-Deep” Phenomenon, and the Impossible Subjectivity of Film Criticism

Entering A Ghost Story, reviews and friend’s suggestions had me surprised when I found myself bored at what was supposedly a gut-wrenching film. I wanted to find out why.

A24’s reputation is almost as popular as the company itself. Audiences are well aware of what to expect when stepping into a theater and that logo flashes on screen, vintage film grain layered on top of faux-chromatic aberration. They’re not fooling anyone, these films aren’t on film; A24 is a production company with such masterful marketing that audiences have begun to believe it’s namesake is a style unto itself. “What’s your favorite genre? I prefer Warner Bros.” It sounds strange to treat other corporate entities as we do the apparent filmmaker that is A24, but at the same time, it is impossible to deny that the company has certainly been able to market itself off of a specific feel. You know the type. Quaint, quirky, off beat. This isn’t your dad’s classic wartime drama, or Hollywood’s next attempt at assimilating its subjects, this is an A24 film. This is real, deep, raw, creative; this is art. Anything with that logo is given a level of prestige and an expectation of emotion. And it is that expectation for feeling, the assumed experience one imagines having with a film, that emerges phenomena that I’m afraid requires me to delve into the deepest, most pretentious parts of myself. Because, for some, the A24 logo is a seal of quality that generates the expectation of “being deep.” A24 makes films that are “artsy,” the kinds those out of touch folk at the top of their ivory Hollywood sign would never make. Know why? Because A24 isn’t afraid. That’s right, they’ll title a movie “Civil War” and set it in the present day. They’ll give the weirdo filmmakers budgets to make surreal nightmares. They will include an eight minute, uninterrupted segment of Rooney Mara eating a pie to demonstrate loneliness. Yup. They sure showed those Hollywood big wigs how to make a movie.

I’ll reign myself in, I don’t mean to be so coy; I’m only willing to insult A Ghost Story in these opening sentences because of all of the fantastic examples of meaningful filmmaking that movie also provides, and A24 does admittedly back filmmakers and stories that are not typically celebrated. But, there is no escaping the fact that entering the fifth minute of Mara’s stuffing, my eyes started wandering and thoughts began racing: “Why am I watching this?”

Now, I enjoy a challenging film as much as anyone. I don’t believe movies are made to be digested, consumed, and “solved” with analysis. There isn’t a wholly correct or incorrect way to make a movie or interpret one’s meaning, but there is a limit to what an audience member can tolerate. This is where the signs of a truly masterful filmmaker shine: not just in following the rules, but knowing how to break them for a purposeful effect that engages the audience instead of disturbing the viewing experience. Bending the medium to one’s whim can be the sign of an ambitious artist on the brink of a breakthrough, or a misapplication of its affordances and unfulfilled premise. For this viewer, A Ghost Story acts as an amazing case study of this difficult balance, and how tipping the scales can lead to a consistent complaint in film discourse: the “fake-deep” film.

Movies where “nothing happens” are closely associated with films that are labeled “fake deep.” Most often, they’re quaint, quirky, and…perhaps a bit off beat. One could argue the A24 aesthetic has marketed itself on the perceived level of nuance its visual aesthetic affords, as conversations surrounding a film’s meaning often dominates the discourse when “nothing happens.” Of course, stories take many forms, but one may view The Before Trilogy with a sense of boredom instead of contagious warmth because “it’s just people walking and talking.” But if this were the case, would the trilogy be so unanimously regarded as one of the greatest ever made? It’s this that I find so interesting about the fake-deep discourse: it works almost completely on a case-by-case basis. One will rarely hear the same person give the exact opinion as another when it comes to asking someone what a movie “means,” and whether or not that makes it ”deep.” In this respect, we are ultimately continuing the discourse between film as “high” and low” art. Essentially, the fake-deep movie is the low art disguising itself as a rich socialite, pretending to say something while muttering how much money they’ll make under their breath.

The difficulty in deciding whether a film is “actually deep” lies in the fact that to throw a hat in this argument is to be vulnerable. One must be willing to say they “didn’t get” a movie in order to discuss it further. Nowadays, the average content consumer is so afraid of being wrong or challenged that sharing an opinion, or admitting one’s own confusion for the sake of intellectual development, is a literal nightmare. Are you really going to tell a group of snobby film students that you want The Dark Knight explained to you? No one wants to feel patronized, whether when discussing a movie, or watching it. The subjective nature of determining a film’s meaning always makes me wonder, is a film actually meaningless, or was I just not opening myself up to the its experiments? Is the film not working, or not working for me? Part of film criticism is learning to meet the movie where it’s at. There is a premise, does the film fulfill its promise? That is the framework I try to analyze movies with; not a ubiquitous ruleset, but a philosophy that accounts for the myriad of goals individual films each have.

It is from this attempt at practicing what I hoped would be a more generative and meaningful form of film criticism that I found my personal marker for determining whether a film or scene tip-toes into the realm of self-obsession. Again, this is a very subjective discussion: it’s impossible to concretely determine a director’s intention for a given scene, and even more to guarantee how an audience member will interpret it. But for this obsessive viewer, in its inconsistent quality, A Ghost Story helped me gauge my own personal metric for when a film starts to “look deeper” than it really is.

Which is where we return to Mara, on the floor, stuffing a pie in her face. Reactions to this scene, and the film overall, are generally reflective of its ability to effectively elicit visceral emotion. The comment section for the scene posted on Youtube has dozens upon dozens of users not just relating to Mara’s character, but sharing their own tragedies. For these viewers, the scene was raw and resonant. It was a cinematic moment perfectly constructed to elicit a feeling by making the viewer sit within what many have called the most accurate depiction of on-screen grief they’ve witnessed. Which is why I was confused when turning on A Ghost Story and found myself unbelievably bored. Mara’s pie eating takes up eight minutes of a 99 minute film with a single cut in the entire sequence. Other than that, the camera is static, the lighting is set, the music is non-existent. All the audience is presented is a grieving wife, in real time attempting to suffocate her pain with a baked good. Similarly, mere scenes prior to this one, there is a minutes long shot that has our leads simply framed close in bed, sleeping. Again, a static camera, fixed lighting, hardly any sound. These are moments of great emotion presented as matter of fact as possible, and despite my criticisms, I cannot say they aren’t wholly effective.

That may sound like an unexpected turn for this article to take. After bashing A24 for wasting my time, suddenly Mara’s pie has some glint of meaning I was keeping from the audience? Hardly the case, because I am being genuine when I say that, in the beginning, the pie stuffing scene was effective for me. In that first minute of C and M caressing each other in bed, I felt their love. These moments that I have flagged for being “fake deep” aren’t so because they are void of meaning or authorial intent, but rather because as the scene’s addled along and my eyes crept towards that timeline, their meaning diminished. This is what I believe to be the tool in my newly named and trademarked critic’s toolbox to determine if a film is “fake deep:” an inverse relationship between the shot’s duration and its intended effect by the author, based on how the effect fulfills the story’s premise.

For example, Mara’s pie eating scene. Based on viewer reactions, hell, even my own to the scene’s opening minute, there is undoubtably meaning to be taken from this action. A blanket statement: the stylistic choices made were done so intentionally by a group of filmmakers. At least, that’s the assumption. Attempting to parse a director’s specific intention for how a scene should play will always have some degree of ambiguity, but largely, it is easy to see how this scene was effectively constructed in a way to demonstrate genuine grief. The static camera and long take makes Mara feel as if she is under a spotlight, the pressure of invisible eyes forcing the pie down her throat, while simultaneously never feeling more alone. The lighting is cool and sparse, adding to the depressive nature of the scene. Music is cut; all we hear is the sound of Mara’s fork screech against the glass as she presses harder into the pie, hoping to kill whatever hurt is inside. Clearly, decisions were made to create a specific atmosphere and generate a desired mood in the viewer to propel the story.

But, that doesn’t mean a shot’s maximum effectiveness is a linear constant. Say my interpretation is “correct,” that the stylistic choices made demonstrate the intention of the filmmakers to convey what grief looks like to the audience by associating them with Mara’s character. They achieve this by applying Mara’s lived experience to the viewer through specific filmmaking techniques. The result? A scene that has riveted some, and bored others, with the discrepancy between the two being the threshold of one’s willingness to fall victim to the film’s tricks. As stated previously, this discussion of “high vs low” art, of what makes a film or scene meaningful and effective, is nested in subjectivity. One must be willing to be challenged, open to a film’s tricks, if they are to engage with its messaging. That is why I tried catching myself in this moment; I wanted to feel the effect of the long take and empty soundscape. And, initially, I did. Mara collapsing to the ground in the only hard cut in the scene was truly jarring; a simple act made emotional through practiced restraint. However, as the scene continued, the restraint loosened, and the meaning became palpable. Overtly so. Offensive even. By minute seven of watching the same shot of Mara stuffing her face, I could not help but feel as though I was wasting time, that the film was wasting my time. It was the same feeling I had when entering silent minute number four of Mara and Affleck’s aforementioned static close-up. In this moment, the film is attempting to communicate to the audience that these two are in love. At first, their intimate whispers and careful strokes made my chest flare: the film was working its magic. I could see the scene, notice its stylistic choices, and understand how they were having a specific effect on me, the viewer. The shot itself is close, both actors framed tight with intimacy. Again, there’s no backing track to distract viewers from the couple’s tender whispers. Once again, we see an effective scene generating an intended emotion in the viewer to push the narrative by using intentional stylistic devices. However, my heart turned cold when I couldn’t understand why I was still watching this shot. Now, instead of challenging and engaging me by testing my patience, the film has crossed it, now shoving its stylistic choices and intended meaning in my face until there is nothing new to experience or parse. Thus, the inverse relationship between shot duration and a scene’s intended effect. While there are most likely thousands of exceptions to this rule, I find A Ghost Story specifically illuminates how stylistic choices made within “fake deep” movies, where characters “do nothing,” where the soundtrack is sparse and dialogue is closer to a haiku than natural speech, can particularly fall victim to these allegations. There is a language to the “fake deep” movie, and it is one that can easily be mistranslated as being “fake deep.” After watching A Ghost Story, I believe the means of analyzing a film’s effectiveness in its meaning-making is by considering the relationship between authorial intent, the author’s chosen stylistic device, and its ability to subconsciously effect the viewer.

Is the filmmaker restrained in their use of the effect? Overt in its intention? If not, they may amplify the effect to the point of distraction, frustration, or in the case of A Ghost Story, boredom. I did not feel Mara’s grief, only pandered to. “I get it,” I told the film, “she’s grieving.” “No, you didn’t. She’s still eating the pie,” see? She’s GRIEVING!” In an attempt for to ensure viewers are experiencing the intended effect, the film amplifies it to a point of gradation. Films feel fake deep when they eliminate the potential for interpretation by the viewer out of fear that they won’t “get it.” The result is stuffing a cinematic device down the viewers throat like Mara’s pie past the point of comfort or appreciation, which in turn reduces its interpretive value and ability to gleam meaning from a given scene. I had been under the film’s spell until it revealed its illusion, at which point, I was just frustrated that I paid the price of admission.

Is there a concrete way to determine if a film is “fake deep?” If there is, it isn’t as simple as taking only a single viewers opinion into account. In fact, one would have to consider the director’s intention with every scene, mark the cinematic decisions made, and determine if its execution matches the intention. For every scene. For every viewer. Only then can we determine if a movie is universally “meaningful.”

But where’s the fun in that?

I didn’t write this piece in order to reveal a new universal rule of filmmaking, I’ve already spoken about the exceptions to this hypothesized relationship in this article. Rather, I was driven to analyze A Ghost Story because it didn’t work for me, while it was effective for the majority of its viewers. I analyzed A Ghost Story not to try and prove the movie was “wrong” in its execution because it was objectively “meaningless.” Rather, I did so because I wanted to learn why the film was not working for me in particular. And thus, we return to the conversation of film criticism, and the ultimate takeaway from attempting to label films as “meaningful:” it’s a meaningless endeavor. There will always be another opinion, there will always be a separate pair of eyes interpreting the same scene as you but in a completely different context, coming to a completely different conclusion. Seeing Rooney Mara eat a pie for eight minutes did not work for me. But, does that really matter when it made the grieving widow watching at home feel a little less alone?