A Ghost Story (2017) Movie Script
1
Why are you laughing?
I am so scared.
- Why?
- I don't know.
Don't be scared.
When I was little
and we used lo move all the lime,
I'd write these notes,
and I would fold them up really small...
and I would hide them in different places,
so that if 1 ever wanted to go back,
there'd be a piece of me there waiting.
- Did you ever go back?
- No.
See? That's what I'm saying.
'Cause I didn't need to.
What'd they say'?
They were just like, old rhymes and poems.
Things I wanted to remember about...
living in that house,
or what I liked about it.
Why did you leave?
Why'd you leave all those houses?
'Cause I didn't have a choice.
Some weird noises in this house.
What are you doin'?
I was just trying to see how heavy it was,
if I could move it.
I just had it tuned.
That was like a year ago.
But it's probably still in tune.
Should I try and find movers?
- For the piano?
- Yeah.
Mmm. Are we taking it with us?
She said we can if we want to.
Um... we can probably find
a better one if we just...
Is there something there?
What was that?
I don't know.
Maybe something fell on the piano.
What time is it?
My heart's racing.
Can I have a minute?
- Wait.
- Yes?
Never mind.
Are you okay?
- Are you sure?
- Yeah.
- I'll be just around the corner.
- Thank you.
No, no, it's not your fault.
I've been away.
Are you gonna be okay
to drive home?
Yeah. Are you?
Thanks for taking me home.
Yeah.
Call me this week.
Okay.
Hey.'
This shouldn't be so hard.
I really don't wanna talk about
this anymore tonight, okay?
Well, can we talk about it tomorrow?
Okay, maybe.
Here.
Are you runnin' late? S
Did you sleep too much?
All the awful dreams
Felt real enough
Is your lover there?
is she wakin' up?
Did she die in the night?
And leave you alone?
Alone
Mirror, mirror
There's your crooked nose
What a stupid game
Getting nothing done
With your longest track
Your highest score
While you crush your back
And lament the war
War
Am I runnin' late?
I get overwhelmed
All the awful dreams
All the bright screens
is my lover there?
Are we breakin' up?
Did she find someone else?
And leave me alone?
Alone
Okay?
Carlos!
No, no, no, no. Si, no.
Okay?
Yasmina.
Mama.
Breathe this moment like
it's gonna be my last one
Light it up, burn it down...
I don't know if you
believe in the spirit world.
- I do.
- You do?
Well, then this next phenomenon
will really fascinate you.
I know it sounds strange,
but it does begin with,
"Pick a card, any card, so pick one out.
And you got it?
- Burn the image into your mind.
- Yeah. Got it, got it.
I want you to watch this
very closely.
Because if the spirits are
with us in this haunted house...
they need to find the card.
Holy shit.
I don't-I don't-
I don't have a problem with it
if it's two people in love.
It's some sort of expression
of, you know, kind of...
It sounds like you don't think
women should do that.
If it's not gonna be that
and it's not gonna make us
any money, then why...
- And those are your two polarities?
- Polarities?
Priorities or whatever.
Money's just money.
You gotta take that
out of the equation. Now what?
Well, that's what I was saying.
It's not just...
No, no, you can find a reason.
And I wanna find out what happens, too!
So, no money.
What have you got left?
You've got... other people.
You got Clara, you've got time.
Time's a big one.
But you've got about as much
as anyone else, give or take.
What about God? Maybe you've got God.
Do you?
- What? Have God?
- Yes.
No.
Okay.
Well, here's howl break it down.
A writer writes a novel.
A songwriter writes a song.
A symphonist writes a symphony...
which is maybe the best example
because all the best ones
were written for God.
So, tell me what happens if Beethoven's
writing his Ninth Symphony"
and suddenly he wakes up one day
and realizes that God doesn't exist.
So, suddenly all of these notes
and chords and harmonies.
That were intended to,
you know, supersede the flesh,
you realize, "Oh, that's just physics."
So Beethoven says,
"Shoot, God doesn't exist,
so I guess I'm writing this
for other people.
It's just nuts and bolts now."
He didn't have any children,
that I can recall,
- but if he did...
- He had a nephew.
- He had a what?
- A nephew, he had a nephew.
Okay. Great. So he-he writes it for him.
Or Immortal Beloved.
Yes.
Or for whoever that was.
But let's leave love out of this
and let's wrap this all up
under the blanket
of someone thinking,
"This is something
that they'll remember me for."
And they did. And we do.
And sure enough,
we do what we can to endure.
We build our legacy piece by piece,
and maybe the whole world
will remember you,
or maybe just a couple of people,
but you do what you can to
make sure you're still around
after you're gone.
And so we're still reading this book,
we're still singing the song,
and kids remember their parents
and their grandparents
and everyone's got their family tree,
and Beethoven's got his symphony,
And we've got it too.
And everyone will
keep listening to it f...
for the foreseeable future.
But...
that's where things start breaking down,
because your kids...
Do you have kids?
Wait, who here has kids?
You? Your kids are gonna die.
Yours too. Yours too.
Hey, just sayin'. They're all gonna die,
and their kids will die,
and so on, and so on.
And then there's gonna be
one big-one big tectonic shift.
Yosemite will blow and
the western plates will shift,
and the oceans will rise,
the mountains will fall,
and 90 percent of humanity will be gone.
One fell swoop. This is just science.
Whoever's left will...
go to higher ground
and social order will fall away,
and we will revert
to scavengers and hunters
and gatherers,
but maybe there's someone...
someone who one day hums
a melody they used to know.
And it gives everyone
a little bit of hope.
Mankind's on the verge of being wiped out,
but it keeps going a little bit longer
because someone hears someone
else hum a melody in a cave
and the physics of it in their ear
make them feel something other
than fear or hunger or hate,
and mankind carries on
and civilization gets back on track.
And now you're thinking
you're gonna finish that book.
But it won't last.
'Cause by and by, the planet's gonna die.
In a few billion years
the sun will become a red giant
and it'll, uh,
eventually swallow Earth whole.
This is a fact.
Now, maybe by that point,
we'll have set up shop on some
completely different planet.
Good for us. Maybe we've figured out a way
of carrying with us
all these things that matter.
They've got a photocopy
of the Mona Lisa out there,
someone sees it, mixes a little bit
of alien dirt with some spit,
paints something new,
the whole thing keeps going.
[Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" playing.
But even that doesn't matter.
Because even if some form of mankind
carries some recording
of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony"
all the way into the future,
the future's gonna hit a brick wall.
The universe will keep expanding,
and it'll eventually
take all matter with it.
Everything you've ever strived for,
everything that you and some stranger.
On the other side of the planet
share with some future stranger
on some entirely different
planet without even knowing it,
everything that ever made
you feel big or stand up tall,
it'll all go.
Every atom in this dimension...
will be pulled apart by force
as simple as...
And then all these shredded particles
will contract again...
and... the universe is gonna
suck itself back into a speck
too small for any of us to see.
So, you can write a book...
but the pages will burn.
You can sing a song and pass it down.
You can write a play and hope
that folks will remember it...
keep performing it.
You can build your dream house...
but ultimately none of that
matters any more
than digging your fingers into the ground
to bury a fence post.
Or... or fucking.
Which I guess
is just about the same thing.
Thank you, O Lord,
for these, Thy blessings,
which we are about to receive
from Thy bounty.
Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
This is good.
This is good.
We'll have this house built.
Put it right there.
There. You see it?
I know you can't see it.
A little house at first, but...
Here we are.
Take a look around.
We've got two, uh, bedrooms
back there with a bathroom.
The kitchen's that way.
There's a study/den.
We, um, haven't had any tenants
in a few months...
- So it's a little musty.
- Does it come with the piano?
Oh, it's... always...
It's always been here.
- It's... If you want...
- Does it come?
It's always been here.
- I can't hear you.
Yeah, if you keep playing...
- you can't hear me.
- I'm just kidding.
Uh, it's always been here.
If you want, I can have it removed.
No.
I-I gotta take this.
Um, make yourself at home.
Thank you, Linda.
Hello?
Hey.
Oh, no, I'm showing a house right now.
Are you runnin' late?
Did you sleep too much?
All the awful dreams
Felt real enough
Is your lover there?
s she wakin up?
Did she die in the night?
Leave you alone?
Alone
Mirror, mirror
There's your crooked nose
Boring hair
A dozen wrinkles
- No children
- Come on.
Just emptiness
- No place like home
- Which is fine. I get it.
That's what people do.
They leave, they go away,
and then they come home again.
I'm the one who's always here.
Mess
20 messages
Did you hurt your thumbs? S
What is it you like
about this house so much?
Seriously?
History?
What does that mean?
Honey, we've got history.
Not as much as you think.
This isn't how it's supposed to work.
We're supposed to make decisions together.
- Don't you understand that?
- Yes.
So why am I the only one making them?
Because I don't want what you want.
'Cause you want to stay here?
Mm-hmm.
Why?
Hi.
Hi.
Hey.
What?
It's okay. We can go.
We can go.
I don't understand.
Something fell on the piano.
What time is it?
Why are you laughing?
I am so scared.
- Why?
- I don't know.
Don't be scared.
When I was little
and we used lo move all the lime,
I'd write these notes,
and I would fold them up really small...
and I would hide them in different places,
so that if 1 ever wanted to go back,
there'd be a piece of me there waiting.
- Did you ever go back?
- No.
See? That's what I'm saying.
'Cause I didn't need to.
What'd they say'?
They were just like, old rhymes and poems.
Things I wanted to remember about...
living in that house,
or what I liked about it.
Why did you leave?
Why'd you leave all those houses?
'Cause I didn't have a choice.
Some weird noises in this house.
What are you doin'?
I was just trying to see how heavy it was,
if I could move it.
I just had it tuned.
That was like a year ago.
But it's probably still in tune.
Should I try and find movers?
- For the piano?
- Yeah.
Mmm. Are we taking it with us?
She said we can if we want to.
Um... we can probably find
a better one if we just...
Is there something there?
What was that?
I don't know.
Maybe something fell on the piano.
What time is it?
My heart's racing.
Can I have a minute?
- Wait.
- Yes?
Never mind.
Are you okay?
- Are you sure?
- Yeah.
- I'll be just around the corner.
- Thank you.
No, no, it's not your fault.
I've been away.
Are you gonna be okay
to drive home?
Yeah. Are you?
Thanks for taking me home.
Yeah.
Call me this week.
Okay.
Hey.'
This shouldn't be so hard.
I really don't wanna talk about
this anymore tonight, okay?
Well, can we talk about it tomorrow?
Okay, maybe.
Here.
Are you runnin' late? S
Did you sleep too much?
All the awful dreams
Felt real enough
Is your lover there?
is she wakin' up?
Did she die in the night?
And leave you alone?
Alone
Mirror, mirror
There's your crooked nose
What a stupid game
Getting nothing done
With your longest track
Your highest score
While you crush your back
And lament the war
War
Am I runnin' late?
I get overwhelmed
All the awful dreams
All the bright screens
is my lover there?
Are we breakin' up?
Did she find someone else?
And leave me alone?
Alone
Okay?
Carlos!
No, no, no, no. Si, no.
Okay?
Yasmina.
Mama.
Breathe this moment like
it's gonna be my last one
Light it up, burn it down...
I don't know if you
believe in the spirit world.
- I do.
- You do?
Well, then this next phenomenon
will really fascinate you.
I know it sounds strange,
but it does begin with,
"Pick a card, any card, so pick one out.
And you got it?
- Burn the image into your mind.
- Yeah. Got it, got it.
I want you to watch this
very closely.
Because if the spirits are
with us in this haunted house...
they need to find the card.
Holy shit.
I don't-I don't-
I don't have a problem with it
if it's two people in love.
It's some sort of expression
of, you know, kind of...
It sounds like you don't think
women should do that.
If it's not gonna be that
and it's not gonna make us
any money, then why...
- And those are your two polarities?
- Polarities?
Priorities or whatever.
Money's just money.
You gotta take that
out of the equation. Now what?
Well, that's what I was saying.
It's not just...
No, no, you can find a reason.
And I wanna find out what happens, too!
So, no money.
What have you got left?
You've got... other people.
You got Clara, you've got time.
Time's a big one.
But you've got about as much
as anyone else, give or take.
What about God? Maybe you've got God.
Do you?
- What? Have God?
- Yes.
No.
Okay.
Well, here's howl break it down.
A writer writes a novel.
A songwriter writes a song.
A symphonist writes a symphony...
which is maybe the best example
because all the best ones
were written for God.
So, tell me what happens if Beethoven's
writing his Ninth Symphony"
and suddenly he wakes up one day
and realizes that God doesn't exist.
So, suddenly all of these notes
and chords and harmonies.
That were intended to,
you know, supersede the flesh,
you realize, "Oh, that's just physics."
So Beethoven says,
"Shoot, God doesn't exist,
so I guess I'm writing this
for other people.
It's just nuts and bolts now."
He didn't have any children,
that I can recall,
- but if he did...
- He had a nephew.
- He had a what?
- A nephew, he had a nephew.
Okay. Great. So he-he writes it for him.
Or Immortal Beloved.
Yes.
Or for whoever that was.
But let's leave love out of this
and let's wrap this all up
under the blanket
of someone thinking,
"This is something
that they'll remember me for."
And they did. And we do.
And sure enough,
we do what we can to endure.
We build our legacy piece by piece,
and maybe the whole world
will remember you,
or maybe just a couple of people,
but you do what you can to
make sure you're still around
after you're gone.
And so we're still reading this book,
we're still singing the song,
and kids remember their parents
and their grandparents
and everyone's got their family tree,
and Beethoven's got his symphony,
And we've got it too.
And everyone will
keep listening to it f...
for the foreseeable future.
But...
that's where things start breaking down,
because your kids...
Do you have kids?
Wait, who here has kids?
You? Your kids are gonna die.
Yours too. Yours too.
Hey, just sayin'. They're all gonna die,
and their kids will die,
and so on, and so on.
And then there's gonna be
one big-one big tectonic shift.
Yosemite will blow and
the western plates will shift,
and the oceans will rise,
the mountains will fall,
and 90 percent of humanity will be gone.
One fell swoop. This is just science.
Whoever's left will...
go to higher ground
and social order will fall away,
and we will revert
to scavengers and hunters
and gatherers,
but maybe there's someone...
someone who one day hums
a melody they used to know.
And it gives everyone
a little bit of hope.
Mankind's on the verge of being wiped out,
but it keeps going a little bit longer
because someone hears someone
else hum a melody in a cave
and the physics of it in their ear
make them feel something other
than fear or hunger or hate,
and mankind carries on
and civilization gets back on track.
And now you're thinking
you're gonna finish that book.
But it won't last.
'Cause by and by, the planet's gonna die.
In a few billion years
the sun will become a red giant
and it'll, uh,
eventually swallow Earth whole.
This is a fact.
Now, maybe by that point,
we'll have set up shop on some
completely different planet.
Good for us. Maybe we've figured out a way
of carrying with us
all these things that matter.
They've got a photocopy
of the Mona Lisa out there,
someone sees it, mixes a little bit
of alien dirt with some spit,
paints something new,
the whole thing keeps going.
[Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" playing.
But even that doesn't matter.
Because even if some form of mankind
carries some recording
of Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony"
all the way into the future,
the future's gonna hit a brick wall.
The universe will keep expanding,
and it'll eventually
take all matter with it.
Everything you've ever strived for,
everything that you and some stranger.
On the other side of the planet
share with some future stranger
on some entirely different
planet without even knowing it,
everything that ever made
you feel big or stand up tall,
it'll all go.
Every atom in this dimension...
will be pulled apart by force
as simple as...
And then all these shredded particles
will contract again...
and... the universe is gonna
suck itself back into a speck
too small for any of us to see.
So, you can write a book...
but the pages will burn.
You can sing a song and pass it down.
You can write a play and hope
that folks will remember it...
keep performing it.
You can build your dream house...
but ultimately none of that
matters any more
than digging your fingers into the ground
to bury a fence post.
Or... or fucking.
Which I guess
is just about the same thing.
Thank you, O Lord,
for these, Thy blessings,
which we are about to receive
from Thy bounty.
Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.
This is good.
This is good.
We'll have this house built.
Put it right there.
There. You see it?
I know you can't see it.
A little house at first, but...
Here we are.
Take a look around.
We've got two, uh, bedrooms
back there with a bathroom.
The kitchen's that way.
There's a study/den.
We, um, haven't had any tenants
in a few months...
- So it's a little musty.
- Does it come with the piano?
Oh, it's... always...
It's always been here.
- It's... If you want...
- Does it come?
It's always been here.
- I can't hear you.
Yeah, if you keep playing...
- you can't hear me.
- I'm just kidding.
Uh, it's always been here.
If you want, I can have it removed.
No.
I-I gotta take this.
Um, make yourself at home.
Thank you, Linda.
Hello?
Hey.
Oh, no, I'm showing a house right now.
Are you runnin' late?
Did you sleep too much?
All the awful dreams
Felt real enough
Is your lover there?
s she wakin up?
Did she die in the night?
Leave you alone?
Alone
Mirror, mirror
There's your crooked nose
Boring hair
A dozen wrinkles
- No children
- Come on.
Just emptiness
- No place like home
- Which is fine. I get it.
That's what people do.
They leave, they go away,
and then they come home again.
I'm the one who's always here.
Mess
20 messages
Did you hurt your thumbs? S
What is it you like
about this house so much?
Seriously?
History?
What does that mean?
Honey, we've got history.
Not as much as you think.
This isn't how it's supposed to work.
We're supposed to make decisions together.
- Don't you understand that?
- Yes.
So why am I the only one making them?
Because I don't want what you want.
'Cause you want to stay here?
Mm-hmm.
Why?
Hi.
Hi.
Hey.
What?
It's okay. We can go.
We can go.
I don't understand.
Something fell on the piano.
What time is it?