“We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.” — Benjamin Disraeli
Have you ever heard strange, sudden noises in your house? Those crackling, crisp sounds that break the silence of the night? Have you ever had a book fall from your shelf, supposedly resulted from a gust of wind or perhaps a simple misplacement?
I’m sure I’m not alone here. These strange occurrences are no stranger. To me, they’re the result of my neighbors’ moving chairs, my parents cracking their knuckles, or an object finally experiencing enough force that it overcomes friction, making its way outward and rubbing against the wooden platform on which it had sat, quietly. To you, it might have come from the same sources. Either way, those noises can be scary and mysterious, jumping out to scare us just when we’re about to enter dreamland.
But what if I tell you that they aren’t a misplacement, a cracking of knuckles, or a gust of wind, but instead they all come from one source and one source only?
LIKE LAST TIME, I HIGHLY SUGGEST THAT YOU WATCH THE FILMS BEFORE YOU READ ON — — SPOILERS AHEAD.
At this point, you might still be wondering why I’m comparing and contrasting Interstellar and A Ghost Story. One is a realistic yet imaginative space Sci-Fi, the other a slow-burn, minimalist work of magical realism; the former is a big-budget summer blockbuster, the latter an arthouse indie that cost a mere tenth of a million. And even the stories themselves: how can one compare and contrast the story of an astronaut who embarks on a journey to save the entirety of humanity and one of a ghost silently watching someone go about their day?
I think that if you can recall the stories well, you know the answer precisely: ghosts doing stuff in a room.
In the beginning, both films establish their stories’ rural settings — in houses far enough from the busy city and close enough to the grass, the trees, and whatever mother Earth still has to offer during that time in history.
In Interstellar, protagonist Cooper is just a farmer trying to survive on a planet deprived of food and clean air. He loves his daughter Murph, but he must make the difficult choice of leaving the planet for her sake and, perhaps more crucially, for the sake of all humankind. Cooper enters the Tesseract where he can communicate with Murph, who is still on the Earth. I have seen the film about three times now. Barely any film recreates space and all its wonders as accurately and stunningly as Interstellar. Kudos to Nolan.
A Ghost Story features a couple living in a house comparable to the one Cooper lived in. The two are named only as C and M. One morning, C dies in a car crash. While his corpse rests on a hospital bed, he rises covered in a white bedsheet, traveling slowly towards his house. Two black holes are poked where the eyes are to complete the look of a typical Halloween ghost costume. He then waits and waits, until M leaves the house as she had intended. Others move in, then out. The cycle continues for a very, very long time. I have only seen it once, but it’s undoubtedly the most meditative and thought-provoking film I have ever seen. Kudos to David Lowery.
Perhaps it’s clearer how the two films overlap after this quick recap. The time during which Cooper is in the Tesseract is similar to the experiences of C’s ghost.
Cooper is and has always been the “ghost” of Murph when he enters the Tesseract. His presence and ability as a “ghost” are crucial for his end goal, and he can travel quite freely through spacetime. C becomes an actual ghost after the tragic accident. Like Cooper’s “ghost”, C’s ghost survives longer than any human and has seen more than any human. Most importantly, both characters witness and experience a life they once lived, in a little rural house and with people whom they deeply loved. They feel helpless, remorseful, and they are in deep pain. (If you pay close attention, even the soundtracks sound identical at times).
The life they had is no more. There is no going back. One thing led to another, and they are now stuck in an unfamiliar dimension that restrains their abilities to communicate.
Yet here, in the ability to communicate, lies the key difference between the two.
In A Ghost Story, C’s ghost is utterly incapable of communication with humans. Yet like other humans, it is stuck in the regular passage of time. All it can do is to observe, follow, and occasionally destroy. We never see the face of the ghost change a bit, but we can feel it, in the way it turns its head, the manner of its movements, and whether it sits or stands. No one knows that it exists. Throughout the story, the ghost tries desperately to acquire the note that M left in the narrow crevice on the wall. It wants to know if M put down a heartfelt poem or a piece of important memory when they were still together. That goal, however, proves to be incredibly difficult: the ghost’s hands can’t reach into the crevice. So for most of the story, the ghost simply observes the people that live and move about the house, trying to recreate the life and body it once had. It witnesses the destruction of the house, the establishment of an office building, and a future utopia that nobody from its generation had the privilege to see. Yet it is still trapped by its despair, its loneliness, so much so that under the night sky brightened by the neon lights, it jumps off in an attempt to end it all, only to find itself at a previous time in history, before the house is built. It is not until it finally opens the note that it vanishes, having seen the one object that truly brings closure and perhaps a little bit of joy. Its despair almost lasts forever.
In Interstellar, what happened to Cooper was an unexpected (though planned out) outcome of a deliberate choice. He departed from the Earth in hopes of finding a new, suitable home for the human race and, in particular, for Murph. This is a rational albeit difficult choice, one he made based on Dr. Bank’s theories. Unbeknownst to him though is the higher being — “them” — waiting for him to arrive at the Tesseract. When Cooper first arrives at the Tesseract, he is as dejected as C’s ghost, if not more; although he can see his daughter in her childhood, a period long gone, for a moment, he believed that it was impossible to interact with her. But that all changed when TARS the robot helps him figure out a way to set everything on the right path. He begins to send Morse codes and alter gravity on the Earth at different points with the help of none other than love. He is able to track down the crucial moments in the world in front of him and send crucial data to her daughter. In just a few moments of love, he saves all of humanity.
In broader terms, both films explore the idea of a supernatural being and its relationship with the normal world. In the case of A Ghost Story’s C, the being is the embodiment of depression. It can only see the occurrences of the house but is entirely incapable of altering anything as a ghost. In the case of Interstellar’s Cooper, his ghost is the embodiment of love. Cooper’s ghost can also see the occurrences of the house but is capable of altering something significant.
Although one could argue that despair after the loss of a loved one can be categorized as a form of love, C’s ghost is still trapped in the sheet, in its sadness. Despair lasts forever and beyond. After all, C wants to stay at the house because it has “history”. Cooper’s ghost is trapped in the Tesseract, but in just a moment of love, he finds a way to save humankind. It only takes a moment for love to exert its force. After all, Cooper decides to leave the house because he loves his daughter too much to stay on this planet.
There’s so much more to unpack from both films, but above are my thoughts on the different ways the filmmakers explore the idea of the ghost. To be honest, I don’t feel like describing A Ghost Story as I did here does it justice. It has so much more to offer besides the message that despair can be long-lasting, so just don’t be sad. It’s so much more than I reduced it into here.
Above all else, Nolan and Lowery explore humanity, love, despair, and time in their own ways, each uniquely intimate and imaginative. Both stories are focused on a little house, but expand to explore the bigger questions in life. Indeed, they ask more questions than they answer.
So, the next time a book falls from your shelf, or a noise breaks the peaceful silence, it might be your future (or past) self sending you a message. Don’t be afraid, just locate it and take some notes. Maybe you’ll find from there the secret to immortality, so nobody has to worry about becoming a ghost or having to save humanity.
Images from Interstellar (2014) and A Ghost Story (2017)
