Directed by: Kenneth Lonergan
Starring: Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler
Rated R, 137 minutes
For 50-plus years now, movies have been ceaselessly aiming to represent stark reality on screen. In one decade, we went from Charlton Heston chewing the painted scenery of “Ben-Hur” to Dustin Hoffman’s iconic “I’m walkin’ here, I’m walkin’ here!” in “Midnight Cowboy.” Nowadays, the Coen brothers write every “um” and “uh” into their scripts, while Christopher Guest makes mockumentaries that look realer than the real thing. Kenneth Lonergan’s “Manchester by the Sea” is a continuation in this long tradition, but it differs significantly from its predecessors in that it portrays the shapelessness of life in ways that Hollywood movies have always spurned, all without compromising the compelling story behind it.
The film centers around Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck, “Gone Baby Gone”), a misanthropic loner in Boston, fixing bathtubs and plunging toilets to make ends meet. His brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, “The Wolf of Wall Street”), meanwhile, lives up the shore in Manchester-by-the-Sea with his nice house and his boat and his teenage son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges, “Moonrise Kingdom”). When Joe dies, Lee comes to Manchester to make the funeral arrangements and discovers, to his shock, that Joe has left him the house and has designated him as Patrick’s legal guardian. What follows is a period of reckoning, wherein Lee must decide whether to stay in Manchester to care for his nephew. His decision is especially grueling, given a tragic and checkered history that we learn about through flashbacks involving his ex-wife, Randi (Michelle Williams, “My Week with Marilyn”), who returns warily in the wake of Joe’s death to make amends with Lee.
Perhaps in other hands, “Manchester by the Sea” would be indistinguishable from any number of other domestic dramas: a tragedy, followed by confrontation with one’s demons, followed by a moment of redemption, followed by closure and resolution. But Lonergan, whose previous screenwriting credits include “Gangs of New York” and “The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle,” is clearly not your typical writer. Lee’s emotional journey is supplanted by ambiguity and stoicism, without rising action or even, really, a climax. Even in the little moments, the story ignores basic tenets of plot structure. Consider the scene in the hospital where two nurses look around for the bag of Joe’s possessions, or the scene where Lee and Patrick forget where they’ve parked their car. It’s easy to expect significance in these missteps—Joe’s possessions must have been lost due to some unconsidered factor; the car must have been towed—but again and again, we are disproved. These are simply the errata of living, and the only significance they bear is that they are insignificant.
Such a thematic premise would be wasted if portrayed with heavy-handedness, but Lonergan mutes his actors’ deliveries, making them reactive and fluid and true. Affleck leads the cast admirably as the deeply troubled Lee, balancing his combination of sad resignation and ruinous immobility, making us feel for him while keeping us at arm’s length. Lucas Hedges proves a strong foil as the as-yet unjaded Patrick, distracting himself from the weight of his burden as long as he can bear. The two establish a unique dramatic relationship, each handling the tragedy in stark opposition to the other, but at the same time finding solace in each other. Meanwhile, a supporting cast of family and ex-family colors the story; Kyle Chandler, as the successful brother who still had something to lose, comes back to haunt Lee by reminding him of his guilt and his feelings of unworthiness. Michelle Williams, whose Randi lost everything because of Lee, comes back to offer condolences and forgiveness that he can’t bring himself to accept.
His inability to receive the things he’s given is, ultimately, Lee’s greatest demon, and the one that is least clearly excised by the end. And that’s the way it has to be, Lonergan tells us. Problems that resolve themselves aren’t problems, they’re just stories. “Manchester by the Sea” collects a family’s worth of real problems, handled with real compassion and resolved with realistic expectations. Unlike other attempts at portraying reality on screen, attempts that manufacture nondescript dialogue or try to make stories out of nothing, this one lands because it understands that real life is always engrossing to those who live it.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 12/16/16.