Despite the mysterious title, Denis Côté’s Ghost Town Anthology isn’t a horror anthology. Rather, the title refers to an unusual narrative structure used to depict community and collectivity in the tiny town of Sainte-Irénée-les-Neiges, Quebec.
Across the St. Lawrence River from Côté’s native New Brunswick, the town has a population of 215 people—really, 214. Ghost Town Anthology opens, like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Blue, with a fatal car crash, which kills 21-year-old Simon Dubé. Simon leaves behind an older brother named Jimmy and two middle-aged parents, and each of these three finds their own way to grieve: Jimmy visits Simon’s coffin-confined body, left in a gardener’s shed until spring, when the snow melts; his mother visits the quarry where Simon once worked; and his father, unable to face the prospect of returning home, drives around aimlessly from one blustery location to the next.
But even people with little connection to Simon soon feel linked to his family when mysterious figures, silently watching, begin to appear around town, seemingly in response to the young man’s death. It becomes apparent that these figures—Simon himself and dozens of others from as far back as 80 years ago—are former residents who have passed away. Even though these dead do not interact much with the living, they represent a mysterious and potentially dangerous force that demands a response from the village’s citizens and brings deep-seated small-town issues (like unemployment rates, isolation, substance abuse and general listlessness) to the fore.
There are no jump scares, vicious killers or bloody forms of retribution here. But this is absolutely a haunted movie. First, there’s the matter of Simon’s demise, almost certainly self-inflicted. Why, we must wonder, did he choose to take his own life? Second, history returns to watch this place’s slow death, which we also witness in its crumbling buildings, abandoned machinery and snowy blankness. As with other Côté films such as Vic and Flo Saw a Bear, winter is key to the mise-en-scène of snowmobiles, giant coats, bare trees and animal carcasses. It also impacts the film’s muted sound design, a post-industrial mix of footsteps in snow, distant motors and the occasional hint of electronic drone, subtly provided by Portland doom metal duo The Body. These elements add to the ghostly feel of the film, prompting us to wonder if there’s any meaningful difference at all between the living and the dead. Everything seems fossilized, stuck in time, an effect augmented by the movie’s lack of contemporary technology, with hardly a phone or computer to be found.
Festivals and celebrations provide some distraction from the everyday yet remain fundamentally awkward. The lack of technology, in other words, hasn’t helped with smoothness of interaction. For example, a New Year’s party early in the film shows a number of characters sitting or standing by themselves, willing to look in each other’s direction yet finding it impossible to transition from the silence of the everyday to revelry and socializing. There’s a deep irony here (as well as in a brief birthday gathering, later in the film) that what should emphasize togetherness instead exacerbates isolation. Any sign of happiness lies in the film’s droll, quirky dialogue; when, in a quintessentially Canadian move, Jimmy wonders aloud if the authorities will let them bury Simon’s hockey gear with him. “For sure,” his friend responds. “It’s not a lot to ask, and it’s fucking romantic!”
Beyond these humorous moments, based in a handful of endearing relationships, the film paints a fairly bleak picture of Quebec’s most rural areas. The landscape is beautiful, especially when captured with impressionistic 16mm graininess by cinematographer François Messier-Rheault, but it’s nearly Brutalist: each shot feels as if it’s caught under several densely packed sheets of concrete-like snow and ice. Moreover, the film plays up the distrust of inhabitants towards anyone from beyond its borders, especially people from urban areas. On this front, Côté is critical of the townspeople, to whom the stares of the dead are icy darts. How, the accusatory gazes ask, has a provincial mindset helped this barren land? What has been the benefit of keeping others out?
Yet the gently handheld camera movement betrays a deep sensitivity to their everyday lives and desires, especially set against an impossibly bleak backdrop. By the end, a number of residents have left or are planning to leave for Quebec City, but Côté seems especially sympathetic towards the stubborn ones who stay to face down ghost and ghostliness alike. While these crowds of phantoms are frightening reminders of mortality, they are far from monsters. Instead, they recognize the potency of place, which leads them to refuse a life of ease and related present-day adaptive strategies.
Ghost Town Anthology makes a point of mentioning that its specters are only visible outside of urban areas. Cities transform too quickly to remember the dead on a communal level, but their phantasmal presence lurks forever in the distant quiet of the snow, each accumulating flake an apparition.
Ghost Town Anthology is available to stream now on MUBI.
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