Review of Manchester by the Sea (2016) by Michael%20 P — 07 Mar 2017

This dreadful movie tells the story of a dumb, inarticulate brute who, after the death of his brother, becomes the guardian of his teenage nephew. That interesting idea might have been used to tell an original and perhaps an inspiring story (beware spoiler) about a dumb, inarticulate brute who, compelled by his love for his nephew, becomes an adult human being. We might have seen a story about the nobility of suffering.

No such character development, and no such nobility, is present in this dreary movie. In fact no character development or nobility of any kind can be found here. Casey Affleck's protagonist begins as a dumb, inarticulate brute and ends where he started: as a dumb, inarticulate brute.

In a flashback, we sort of learn that, before his brother's death, Affleck's protagonist had been involved in a terrible tragedy, and that before that tragedy he had been a loving father and husband. (The director's message, like much of this film, is unfortunately murky. Was the protagonist really a loving father and husband before the tragedy --or was he not?).

In any case, we are apparently supposed to understand that he became a dumb, etc., because of the tragedy.

If that is the film's thesis, I don't agree with it and I don't believe it.

In my experience, tragedy does not reverse people's intrinsic character: it strengthens and exaggerates that character.

That is, tragedy conventionally turns drunks into worse drunks and it makes strong men and women even stronger. We all know many examples of both kinds of people.

Perhaps there are strong, decent people in real life whose characters are actually destroyed by their tragedies. I am a grandfather who has spent most of my adult life in Boston and I have never met any such person, but I am willing in the abstract to admit that they might exist.

But this film most assuredly does not persuade me that the "tragedy" experienced by the protagonist transformed him from a kind and loving father and husband into an inarticulate brute. In fact Affleck's protagonist seems to me to be an entirely artificial and unbelievable construct, because we (sort of ) see him in an earlier time as a loving father and husband and then we see him as a brute who is unable to make any human connection, either with a woman or with his nephew. I find that metamorphosis non-believable.

I might note that the people in this film are almost universally unpleasant, and I include in that category the nephew, who is supposed (I guess) to be sympathetic.

It is true that the nephew is in many ways more adult than his uncle. (Why? Why not just a normal 16 year old?) But he is also shown to be a liar, a sleazy manipulator of his girlfriends, and, like almost everyone in the film, a toilet mouth and a dummy. I hated spending two hours with these nasty characters .

Real people are never as one-dimensionally ugly as almost all of the people in this movie. Indeed there are many important films that deal with the hard-bitten New England working class compassionately, without tipping over into sentimentality -- see for example Mohawk Trail.

I note in closing that the scenes of the Boston North Shore are realistic and not prettified, a la Hollywood. Ordinary scenes like the scenes in this movie can of course be achingly poetic (the examples in film, photography and literature are legion), but in this movie, the ordinary scenes are merely ordinary scenes: there is no poetry, no beauty, no nothing.

To me, therefore, the scenes of the North Shore --an area of great natural beauty and historic significance -- are flat and devoid of affect. They are merely banal.

Perhaps I should close on a positive note. Hollywood rarely shows New England as it really is. At least visually, Manchester does show an authentic New England, warts and all. That in itself is a refreshing change for the land of make-believe.

That said, my congrats to Casey Affleck on his Oscar.