I haven’t been blogging for a while (again), because in this currently insane world, I need something truly inspiring to get my fingers humming.

Well, that’s over.

Last weekend I watched my favorite movie release of 2017 on Amazon Prime, and by the time the one hour and 32 minutes were over, the competitors had peeled away and dropped in a pile like the inside of an artichoke. David Lowery’s A Ghost Story is emotional, sublime, creepy and truly transcendent. I don’t use the term “like nothing you’ve ever seen before” lightly, but this film is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Shot in Texas for probably less than it would cost to buy an Arby’s, A Ghost Story is a nearly mute, gracefully filmed meditation on human existence, with an extremely simple premise that ruins nothing if I share it: Casey Affleck plays Rooney Mara’s husband or boyfriend—it’s never made clear and doesn’t even matter—who dies in an auto accident early on and spends the rest of the film inhabiting their house wearing a “ghost sheet” with two sad eye-holes. At first the concept seems somewhat goofy, but with Andrew Droz Palermo’s hushed, arresting cinematography, sparse use of Daniel Hart’s haunting score, and a sterling performance by the perpetually haunted-looking Mara, it doesn’t take long before Affleck’s ghost becomes a silent, deeply affecting character.

With a mere droop or turn of his head as the lonely spectre glides through days and weeks and months and generations, so much is said about love and loss without one line of dialogue being uttered. A Ghost Story is a tour de force that in the end is nothing short of miraculous. It also has a tad of mystery and ambivalence at the conclusion but that only makes you want to discuss the film with someone even more.

Richard Brody of the New Yorker had it on his ten best list today, and due to its lack of promotion, the movie had a snowball’s chance in hell of being nominated for any Oscar. But I could care less. I would watch it again tomorrow.