Mara and Affleck starred in Lowery's Texas crime story "Ain't Them Bodies Saints," and their moody rapport is enough to establish what "A Ghost Story" needs at the start, before Lowery takes a jump into the mundanely fantastic. Twice in the movie, a character caught between life on Earth and whatever lies beyond takes off for good, and the way it's visualized is splendid, swift, over before you know it. The movie plays with time the way Thornton Wilder's early plays "The Long Christmas Dinner" and "The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden" did, gracefully and honestly, with a full appreciation of what you leave behind. And whatever you do, as the guy at the party says, "to make sure you're still around after you're gone."