Yet as he also showed in his wonderful Disney family film Pete’s Dragon, Lowery has a generosity of spirit that rescues A Ghost Story from being an outright bummer.

There’s something terrifying about Lowery’s vision, how (with the help of Daniel Hart’s enveloping soundtrack) it captures the vast, howling churn of the universe swallowing up and forgetting one lonely soul, like it will someday do to us. Intimate and expansive, A Ghost Story follows, well, a ghost-white sheet with eye holes cut out and all-as it lingers in its former home, new owners coming and going, time relentlessly passing. A Ghost StoryĪnyone who’s ever lain awake at night, contemplating mortality-so, I’d think pretty much everyone-should find something validating in David Lowery’s experimental wonder of a film.

The film’s most piercingly telling, damning observation is that it’s the lone woman of color in the room, struggling against an implacable enemy, who’s the only one doing the trying. Either way, it’s good to see someone try. There may be some relief in seeing Beatriz go to bat for us, but, as the film argues, we all still may go down swinging in the end, toppling into the abyss. A caveat: Beatriz at Dinner does not aim to comfort. White’s script is a boldly downbeat descent, given poetic body by Arteta’s watchful, gentle filmmaking. Hayek’s is an earthy, aching performance-one of the best of the year-that’s complemented well by John Lithgow as the opposition, and Connie Britton and Chloë Sevigny as other witless guests. As played by Salma Hayek, zen-calm massage therapist Beatriz is a vessel of collective outrage while also maintaining her individuality, a keenly wrought sense of self. And yet, it’s also cathartically bruising to watch the film’s title character hurl her disgust at a Trumpian billionaire when they wind up, through a mundane twist of fate, at the same nightmarish dinner party. As a biting and ultimately devastating plaint about an economic system grown sociopathically rapacious with greed, it’s almost too much to bear.

Director Miguel Arteta and writer Mike White’s latest collaboration premiered at Sundance in the shell-shocked first days after the presidential inauguration, giving the film an eerie timeliness.

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