“If you leave me, I’ll just follow you.” — a line that at the start of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is purely literal — as a man is convincing his wife to stay by his side and show how much he loves her. But as David Lowery releases more and more features, namely A Ghost Story and The Green Knight , he continues to tackle the same themes of love, loss, and legacy, but from different and unique perspectives. As Lowery grows as a filmmaker, that line grows with him. What was once a literal plea for love now marks the beginning of a metaphorical journey through his filmography exploring the profound impact legacy has on our lives.
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a story about a man, Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck), taking the fall for his lover’s crime. Four years later, Bob breaks out of prison to find her and their young daughter, who was born during his incarceration.
A legacy has both a literal and metaphorical meaning attached to it; the former is about who and what we leave behind — the people and material possessions. But Lowery is more concerned with the latter aspect to a legacy, the metaphorical aspects of how it defines us. In Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, this is presented through feelings, specifically love, rather than tangible objects.
Memory is the key ingredient to anyone’s lasting legacy, for as long as others remember you, you will live on. Bob is incarcerated, and to those he’s left on the outside world, it almost feels like he’s dead; he has stopped sending letters to his wife and daughter, and their memory of each other is at risk of fading away with every day they are apart. Lowery explores memory and legacy here through those on the outside, as well as involving the audience with a continual internal battle debating the consequences and ramifications of his imminent return. Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara), Bob’s wife, has begun to seek comfort in the arms of police officer Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster). Unknown to Patrick, Ruth is the criminal who shot him during the crime at the beginning of the film, which Bob has taken the fall for. We see Ruth’s life coming back together again, with her daughter and Patrick getting on well and filling that missing father void they’ve both been seeking. As Bob tackles the world head-on to get back to his wife and daughter, the audience is forced to grapple with this inner conflict: should Bob even go back home and ruin the happiness that’s been built without him? Perhaps the memory of his last loving sacrifice is enough, and returning will only ruin his legacy of a brave, loving husband to Ruth.
Lowery also explores how legacy can be skewed based on perspective — those who know and love the person, and those on the outside. To the public, Bob is a criminal who has stolen and shot his way into prison, selfishly abandoning his wife and unborn daughter in the process. But to Ruth, and the audience, Bob is a man who would do anything for those he loves — and literally has, taking the fall for the crime so Ruth can raise their child. Lowery takes the themes of legacy and love and leaves you pondering which is more important: how everyone remembers you, or how just those you hold dear remember you.
Move on four years, and A Ghost Story is David Lowery’s most pessimistic, realistic, and existential view on legacy, presenting it as a concept we should largely ignore. The story follows a dead man (Casey Affleck, again), decorated in a Halloween ghost costume, returning to his home to console his wife (Rooney Mara, again), but finding himself stuck in a spectral state unable to comfort her as she grapples with the loneliness of grief.
Where Ain’t Them Bodies Saints views legacy as long-lasting through love, A Ghost Story is more interested in how that view of love and legacy ultimately means nothing. The most striking and obvious example of this is that of a monologue by a house guest, appropriately named Prognosticator (Will Oldham), halfway through the film, who is lamenting about the finite nature of existence. The Prognosticator is essentially Lowery personifying his themes through this character, standing out largely because the film is brimming with long takes and silence for much of the runtime, therefore this is the most any single character says in the film. As dialogue is sparse in the second half, our attention is transfixed on what’s being said.
The monologue questions whether anything humans create or conceive: books, music, films, children, will stand the test of time; in the grand scheme of life as an entity, everyone will eventually die and those great symphonies and books that once seemed important and influential to life will be devoid of meaning. Lowery makes this view exceptionally transparent in one of the final scenes where we see the ghost, only named “C,” disappear after finally reading a hidden note his wife left years past, but has been unable to ever reach. Lowery never shows us what the note says, because ultimately it doesn’t really matter. The world he knows around him is gone and both the literal and metaphorical meanings to his legacy — material and love — are lost: his wife has left, his house has been torn down. There’s now no need for him to hang on; it’s time to embrace the afterlife.
A Ghost Story is intentionally bleak, and the existentialist views present hours of conversation and questions that never truly reach an answer, which is the true beauty of it. Humans have a constant need to feel validated and know that everything we do is with purpose. Lowery presents in A Ghost Story that being truly happy in the moment and throughout our life is enough. There’s no true, definite answer to the meaning of life, so spending your life searching for it is ultimately endless.
However, those that still have an obsession with making sense of everything often turn to piety, or religion, to find answers — which Lowery explores four years later in his latest film, The Green Knight, observing the other side of the legacy coin — looking through the lens of needing a purpose in life to fulfill one’s great destiny.
In the 14th century, being named a Knight was the highest honor a man could receive, and everything else was disregarded. This was how you would be remembered. But in order to become one, the five Knight’s virtues had to be tested and passed. Those five virtues were the staples of a Knight: friendship, generosity, chastity, courtesy, and piety. In The Green Knight, King Arthur’s (Sean Harris) nephew, Gawain (Dev Patel), is sent on a daring quest to confront the mysterious Green Knight (Ralph Ineson), and prove himself to his family, the court, and himself, by passing the test of the Knight’s virtues throughout his quest.
At its core, The Green Knight is all about these virtues. Friendship: after befriending the fox, he threatens it for blocking his path to danger. Generosity: he only rewards the scavenger for information after he has begged for it, and even then only gives one coin. Chastity: he is seduced by the Lady in the manor. Courtesy: when the ghost of St. Winifred asks for help, he asks and expects a reward. Piety: at the beginning of the film, Gawain doesn’t want to attend Christmas mass. These virtues are tested throughout Gawain’s journey and he fails at each, proving he is not ready to be a Knight until he confronts the Green Knight.
Lowery himself describes the film in Vanity Fair’s ‘Scene Breakdown’ as “being about the importance of comporting oneself with integrity and goodness over being concerned with one’s legacy.” This is the lesson Gawain learns throughout his quest. He is so focused on being remembered as a great man, living up to the standards of being King Arthur’s nephew and earning his place at the Round Table through honor, that this is ultimately his downfall. His failures are because of his expectations that everything in life should lead towards a grand legacy. Once he does finally arrive, he feels disappointed that that’s all there was to life, asking, “Is this really all there is?” to which the Green Knight poignantly responds, “What else ought there be?” There’s this expectation that one’s life should be filled with triumph and a philosophical meaning, but as Lowery puts it, goodness and integrity are all that’s needed.
To keep him safe on his adventure, Gawain’s mother (Sarita Choudhury) gives him an enchanted sash to wear, which will keep him from dying no matter what he faces as long as he wears it. The item in itself is a test for Gawain, testing how courageous he is. As long as he is wearing the sash, Gawain can’t submit to the rules of the game and his head cannot fall. After Gawain envisions what his life will become if he succumbs to cowardliness and running from fear, he realizes that the journey in life is more important than the destination. He removes his sash, as he can never truly live on after death with integrity whilst being cowardly. As the Green Knight gets ready to behead him, he declares “Now, off with your head,” before Lowery cuts to black, leaving the ending slightly ambiguous. Speaking to Vanity Fair again, Lowery talks about his interpretation of the ending: “That’s a happy ending. He faces his fate bravely, and there’s honor and integrity in that,” the director and writer said, “but that doesn’t mean that he’s dead, he’s killed. He received the blow that he was dealt, and all is set right within the universe of the film.” His life has amounted to something and his legacy will live on, despite himself being physically killed.
David Lowery’s obsession with legacy has always been a metaphorical one; Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is about the legacy of our love, A Ghost Story is viewing legacy through an existential view, and The Green Knight is about our physical bodies being a vessel to live our life with virtue so that our legacy lives on forevermore. His ideas on legacy have continued to grow and mature with him and offers three distinctly different films, the Lowery legacy trilogy, sharing different interpretations and focus on the importance of legacy.
What’s fantastically conveyed, whether you agree with his views or not, is that each feature will connect with the audience differently; those more religious may relate closer to The Green Knight’s message, and others may identify more with the existentialist views of A Ghost Story, but most importantly of all, David Lowery’s exploration of legacy has asked poignant, philosophical questions to a whole new generation of film fans to ponder on for the years to come and attempts to give some sort of answer to the unexplainable.
