Movie: Manchester by the Sea

[Dave (imported)]

I watched Manchester By The Sea last night and I'll watch it again tonight. It's a somber story.

Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a lost soul, a man with no aim in life. He is a caretaker, jack of all trades, in an apartment complex. He is brusque, rude, and a loner. The tenants treat him poorly and he returns the feelings. The movie has flashbacks and glimpses of happy times, a good life, a marriage, a family. We see his interaction with his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler) and his young nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). However, none of that exists in the present. However, in the present, there is no joy in Lee Chandler's life.

One winter day, Lee Chandler is called back to his small hometown (Manchester by the Sea) because his brother, Joe (Kyle Chandler [same name coincidence] ), has died of congestive heart failure. Joe is divorced from his wife who was a drunk and unstable. Joe has made his brother, Lee, guardian of his son -- a 16 year old HS student with several girlfriends, a band, a hockey team, and an active sex life. It is left to Lee to tell Patrick about his father's death at a hockey practice.

And on the ice we hear the first whispers of something terrible, something so devastating that it changed the Chandler family forever. There are horrors in Lee Chandler's past. There are horrors in Patrick Chandler's past, too).

And these two are thrown together due to the death of a brother and a father. The situation is complicated by the fact that the undertaker must hold the body of Joe Chandler until spring thaw because the graves are dug by shovel and the ground is frozen. Joe's choice of cemetery plot.

The nephew, Patrick, wants to stay in Manchester, stay with his friends, his band, his hockey team, his father's boat... Lee Chandler cannot return to Manchester. He hates the place and the place hates him.

Lee Chandler is truly broken by his past and nothing can or will repair it. He will never live in Manchester again.

Patrick Chandler, his nephew, has no past, his family is either dead or estranged, but he has the promise of a great future.

Their understanding of each other is what this story is all about.

I won't tell you what is revealed about an hour into the movie. (No spoilers). Let's just say be prepared for something devastating.

This isn't a movie where the world and family and Nephew and Uncle come together and all is great and wonderful. There is, however, resolution. There is an understanding of two broken lives comprised in 10 words, only that.

HINT: watch for three framed photographs that are handled with love and sorrow. Those three pictures decorate a room and a life and say volumes.

Casey Affleck plays Lee Chandler as a man with something inside that he must never release. He set with blazing sight, burning eyes, and an immense grief that poisons the world. A truly brilliant portrayal.

Lucas Hedges plays a teen who has lost his family in awful ways. He tries convincingly to be a teenager and nothing more. A second amazing performance.

Lee Chandler's divorced wife (played by Michelle Williams) has a few minutes onscreen that are brilliant.

[Slammr (imported)]

It definitely was not a feel-good movie, but it will stir your emotions. Just reading Dave's review had me revisiting the emotions I felt watching the movie, one of the best I've seen this year.

[Dave (imported)]

I worked with a gentleman who lost his son in a "nothing" of a car accident and fell apart this way. He never was the same afterward. I see the parallels with what Lonergan wrote into this screenplay and directed.

This type of story is rarely put to film. It is mostly presented on the stage. Movies, by their audience, want some happy resolution to end the story. Stage audiences do not demand that.