A film about ghosts and madness that is itself a kind of ghost, this short from master Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama, Saint Laurent, House of Pleasures) tells the story of Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester rifle fortune who was driven insane by unseen forces. But that may not be accurate, for Sarah Winchester, Ghost Opera is as much the story of a production that doesn’t exist — an incomplete work about a fractured life, a sumptuously layered and finely tuned meditation on artistic process and historical truth. To be lost in and perhaps never escaped, Ghost Opera offers more in 24 minutes than many films three, four, five times its length.
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→ Bertrand Bonello’s 10/10 list
→ Dennis Lim essay on Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama