Manchester by the Sea isn’t my sort of movie. I find broadcast news, newspapers and the general dealings of life sad enough without wanting to volunteer to encounter it again when Jan & I go out for our Sunday movie & dinner. However, sometimes I miss the cues telegraphing that one film or another is going to be that sort. That happened this time. And, I have to admit, I’m glad I missed the cues, and that I saw the film.
The story is simple enough. Lee Chandler, played by Casey Affleck is called home to Manchester when his brother Joe, portrayed in flash backs by Kyle Chandler, dies from congestive heart failure. There he finds he has been appointed guardian for his sixteen year old nephew Patrick presented by Lucas Hedges. The ordinary sadnesses of Joe’s death and Patrick and Lee’s complicated relationship slowly are revealed as the tip of a large and looming iceberg.
A. O. Scott writing the review for the New York Times says “A lot happens, and a surprising amount of it is very funny. Mr. Lonergan, a brilliant playwright and a sought-after script doctor, is a master of the quotidian absurd. In his work, the laws of the universe are rigged to make human beings look ridiculous, and the species is internally wired to produce the same effect, so no amount of good taste or moral discipline can stop the jokes from coming.” All true. And, the sadness that has broken Lee is a malaise that envelopes the entire film, some terrible glue that binds the many little stories, more than a few humorous, all feeling authentic to our lives.
The film is beautiful, and the place and the people there are fully a part of the movie. Manchester by the Sea is a small town on Cape Ann, on the north shore above Boston. The movie was filmed there, in Beverly, Gloucester, and Salem. The world we witness is working class Eastern Massachusetts, bound up intimately with fishing. What is never said, like many things not said but present, are the additional difficulties facing that world, hinted at with the ongoing concern over the motor to Joe’s fishing boat, which Patrick wants to keep and continuing fishing.
Each the characters are compelling, each in their own way. After the leads, I especially find Gretchen Mol’s Elise nd C. J. Wilson’s George stuck in my memory – people, all of them, caught up is a story that is more than they can handle, but find they must. In addition to writing the screenplay, Kenneth Lonergan also directed. The movie runs one hundred, thirty-seven minutes.
For me the movie revealed the world of sadness we all live in, and showed how we all deal with this world, or don’t. I found it compelling in how the movie focused on people without a lot of resources for dealing with these things that happen, that inevitably happen. It was impossible for me to not think of how the story might have played out differently if there was competent counseling at critical moments, or even, a good Zen center for the characters to turn for help. Of course while I found myself thinking of how much they were on their own, and without such aids, the reality for us all is even that often is not enough. The tragedy at the center of the story is not one easily resolved even with all the resources in the world. And that’s a deep truth for all of us.
Haunting. Sad. Shot through with moments of humor. In strange ways, beautiful.
Of the one hundred, forty nine professional reviews aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes, the film garnered a whopping ninety seven percent positive rating. And, I was a bit more surprised, a full eighty nine percent of the sixteen thousand, plus, scores provided by viewers, were positive.
I join them, and I recommend this movie.
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