Review of Manchester by the Sea (2016) by Rococozephyr — 19 Jan 2017

Manchester By The Sea opens with central character Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) going between apartments in his job as a janitor in a down-at-heel Boston neighbourhood. He’s withdrawn, rude and occasionally violent. His life is interrupted when he is called back to the small coastal town of Manchester, where his brother has died suddenly due to a heart condition, and finds that he has been declared legal guardian of his teenage nephew Patrick.

The stage is set for an odd couple drama in which Lee and Patrick overcome their awkward relationship to come to terms with their grief, but it quickly transpires that this is not, in fact, the main focus of the film. Events in the present are interspersed with flashback scenes depicting a far more gregarious Lee, then living in Manchester with his wife and three young children, and the contrast between his demeanour now and then hints at dark events which his return to his hometown forces him to confront.

The film is artfully shot with a muted palette of white skies, grey sea and pastel-coloured buildings which reflects the mostly subdued tone. Kenneth Lonergan’s direction is unfussy, generally letting the story and main characters take precedence. Occasional diversions from this approach are effective, most notably a scene in which we watch Lee reveal to Patrick that his father is dead from across a hockey pitch, unable to hear their conversation and forced to interpret the minimal body language of the pair. The mundanity of the situation, reinforced by the inane chatter of Patrick’s hockey teammates, strengthens the emotional impact of the scene, and this idea of the everyday undercutting moments of tragedy recurs throughout the film to occasionally darkly comedic effect.

Affleck’s performance is an understated masterclass, as he conveys suppressed pain and numbness in a manner which brings to mind Ryan Gosling’s performance in the 2010 Derek Cianfrance film Blue Valentine. As with Gosling there, the real strength of Affleck’s portrayal of Lee is how he manages to maintain a coherent sense of character while displaying profoundly different versions of him before and after fundamentally life-altering events. Another link to Blue Valentine is the appearance of Michelle Williams as Lee’s estranged wife; her screen time here is limited, but the few scenes depicting her and Affleck together are among the most powerful in the film.

Lonergan has produced a brilliantly restrained piece of filmmaking which is worthy of the current Oscar buzz being generated around it. Affleck’s performance in particular deserves recognition, and should rightly propel his career to greater heights. The film admirably resists any temptation to allow the simmering tension to bubble over into a dramatic climax which would be at odds with the measured tone of what had gone before. No great resolution or emotional truth is arrived at, but the story of Manchester By The Sea and the flawed characters it depicts are among the most human to have appeared in an Oscar contender in recent years.