Manchester By The Sea

(Warning: contains spoilers for Manchester By The Sea)

I feel this should come with more warnings.  Warning: loooong film.  Warning: bleak, traumatic film.  Warning: no smiling.  Manchester By The Sea stands as the poster child for Oscars 2017 theme of grief.

He's not happy

 Casey Affleck - correction - Academy Award winner, Casey Affleck - plays Lee Chandler, a janitor in Massachusetts who, aside from the odd frustrated outburst at unreasonable tenants, leads a quiet and meagre existence in his basement flat.  Following the sudden death of his brother, Lee returns to his hometown (the eponymous Manchester-by-the-Sea) and finds himself named as the unwilling, legal guardian of Patrick, his teenage nephew.  The two try to find middle ground as Lee is desperate to leave and Patrick is desperate to stay.

In some ways it is easy to draw comparisons to Jackie, the Pablo Larrain film about the assassination of JFK that also garnered awards buzz.  Both use the same technique of a confusing timeline, where sudden intrusive flashbacks are prevalent in the narrative.  Some are relatively benign, some are brutal.  And, again, that's grief - you find your mind wandering to events of years ago.  Like watching YouTube videos - you start off watching one thing, and then suddenly you're 10 clips on, with no idea of what you were trying to do in the first place.

In other ways, it's a film about people who cannot communicate with each other.  A lot of the tension could be avoided if any of the characters could just summon the strength to talk to each other, but each is completely overwhelmed by the hand that life has dealt them.  Most of all, Lee Chandler - a man who no longer believes he is deserving of any joy in his life, and goes out of his way to avoid kindness:  the offer of a home cooked meal, companionship, a nicer flat, a better job, or his ex-wife's forgiveness.  It's arguably why he no longer wants to go out on the sea anymore either.  The only time we see Lee smile is when he's on a boat - and he's now in a self-imposed purdah.  I would have liked more time with Michelle Williams' character (Randi) - but she was very underused.  Maybe a deliberate choice - another nice thing that Lee no longer allows himself.

She's not happy either

Affleck's performance is well deserving of his awards, but it's difficult to point definitively to his "Oscar moment" because everything is so internalised.  There is no cathartic moment of release, there is no monologue.  There's just small uncomfortable gestures, as Lee shows us that he just doesn't know how to be anymore.  It's seen when he goes to see his brother's body in the morgue and can't quite work out what to do with his hands.  It's seen in his bemused expression when he wakes up from a gut-punch of a dream to discover that he's left the stove on and the house is full of smoke.

This is what I got when I googled "nobody is happy". 
Better not tell Kenneth Lonergan or he'll try to make the film bleaker.

For all it's bleakness, there are a lot of wry laughs along the way.  Nothing massive, just lots of sideways glances, rolled eyes and interruptions.  The stupid things that happen that make people laugh.  Like when Lee's brother Joe is told he has congestive heart disease.  "It's not a good disease" notes his doctor.  "Hmm", muses Joe "what is a good disease?" leading to Joe and Lee giggling about athlete's foot, while their mother gets offended and berates their callousness. 

There's some unusual choices by director Kenneth Lonergan - we keep entering the action just after something has already happened, or leaving just before the conclusion.  Lee gets to the hospital after his brother's death, we aren't privy to the scene where Patrick is told that Lee is his guardian, we join his police interview at the end rather than the beginning, the scenes with Patrick's biological mother and her fiancé end abruptly with an email coda.  A number of scenes (for example - the recurring scenes of Patrick's band lambasting the drummer) feel like they're building to something and then don't.  Even the ending of the film feels like we missed a conversation along the way as it ends with Lee and Patrick fishing.  The audience is left to fill in a lot of blanks.  As such, I'm torn. On one hand I feel like there's a lot left to explore in Manchester-by-the-Sea, but I'm in no great hurry to return.