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Six Questions with A Ghost Story’s David Lowery

Six Questions with A Ghost Story’s David Lowery

Last updated on: November 8, 2017 at 11:53 am by Paul Asay

Six Questions with A Ghost Story’s David Lowery 2017-11-08T11:53:17-06:00 Paul Asay

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Asay:

Photo by Bret Curry, courtesy of A24

Asay: My understanding is your father was a seminary professor, is that correct?

Lowery: Almost. He was a professor of theology at a Catholic university.

Asay: Were you raised Christian?

Lowery: Very deeply so, yes.

Asay: I loved the soliloquy of the man at the party, how he unpacks the enormity of time and his thoughts about meaning, both with and without God. How did your faith background influence the film?

Lowery: I don’t think about how it influenced this film, because it’s not a huge part of my life anymore. I never rejected religion, but it just ceased to be an overriding concern in my life. When I was younger, it was definitely a big part of my day-to-day existence, and now it no longer is. But the fact that I was raised in such a religious family and a religious household definitely has an impact on my work whether I think about it or not. In this case, I wasn’t really thinking about it until I got to that monologue. That monologue is very representative of me trying to figure out how to define value in my life if I’m not subscribing to the ones that I was raised to believe in.

And so yes, if you have God in your life, as the character says, and use that as the end-all, be-all of existence, the standards to which you hold yourself, then there is a great deal of hope in your life. And one can define meaning in everything that one does and apply that meaning towards one faith. And that’s a beautiful thing.

But if you don’t have that—whether you rejected it or never believed in it in the first place or for whatever reason—you have to look elsewhere. And I do think it’s possible. I think it’s possible to find value in your own life that is separate from religion and separate from faith, but it’s harder, because you aren’t allowing yourself that same sense of hope. You can have that hope, and you can have faith in some things, even if you’re choosing not to define it, or explain it, but it’s much more challenging. You’re limiting yourself. You’re applying a built-in ceiling to existence. And as soon as you do that, your options become far more limited.

I feel like the character in the movie gets two-thirds of the way through a pretty good argument as how one could live a hopeful, positive life without looking forward to an afterlife. And he doesn’t quite get there, but he’s working his way there, which is what I was having to do myself. Because while I remain very optimistic, and while I love the idea of there being an afterlife, and there’s a potential for our consciousness to live on after our bodies die, I don’t necessarily expect it. I don’t think I can count on it. Maybe someday that will change, because I certainly used to believe in it, but now I don’t, and at the same time, I don’t want to live a nihilistic life. I want to live a very positive and optimistic life that has a wonderful outlook on the future and the impact that I will have on the world and the people around me.

And one of the key things that I feel that his character leaves out of that monologue is that it is possible to live a life that is full of grace without actually believing in the divine. And that’s an important realization that I myself have made, that grace can be something that one achieves on a more earthly plane, and it’s not necessarily exclusive to the belief in God or any particular religion that otherwise might bestow that grace upon us as humans.

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