Manchester by the Sea
(2016)Casey Affleck, in an Oscar- & Golden Globe-winning performance, leads this drama from writer-director (and playwright) Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count on Me).... More
Lee (Affleck) leads a solitary existence as a janitor, but is forced to return to his small coastal hometown after the death of his brother (Kyle Chandler). There, he juggles the new responsibility of being a guardian to his teenage nephew with painful memories, personal demons that plague him. Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, and Gretchen Mol co-star.Hide
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Best Actor (Affleck) and Original Screenplay, Academy Awards 2017; Best Leading Actor (Affleck) and Original Screenplay, BAFTAs 2017; Best Actor in a Drama (Affleck), Golden Globes 2017
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Directed by Kenneth Lonergan ('Margaret', 'You Can Count on Me')
Starring Casey Affleck, Kyle Chandler, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams, Erica McDermott, Gretchen Mol, Kara Hayward, Heather Burns, Tate Donovan
Written by Kenneth Lonergan
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Manchester by the Sea
BY filmlover superstar
If you want to know who the middle America is who voted for Trump look no further than the good people of Manchester. These are your basic insular mid-westerners who spend their lives 'getting by'.
These are finely crafted studies of people dealing with a sudden death. Each actor does a stirling job and the combination of superb acting and a haunting score make this a very memorable film.
BY cinemusefilm superstar
The plotline has a simple core narrative framed by several abrupt flashbacks that gradually piece together a jigsaw-like story. We meet Lee (Casey Affleck) as a... More handyman and depressive loner whose temper blows over at little provocation. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that he lives in self-exile because of a horrible family tragedy he caused. He has become emotionally hollowed out and unable to relate to people. Suddenly his brother has a fatal heart attack and his will names Lee as executor and guardian of 16 year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges). But to accept this responsibility, Lee must move back to the idyllic seaside town of Manchester by the Sea which is full of traumatic memories, including of his attempted suicide, his divorced wife, and people who are wary of him. He stays for the funeral, drinks heavily, lashes out physically, argues with his teenage nephew, and wants to cut and run. Gradually, he becomes emotionally re-connected with family and place through the experience of caring for the typically full-of-himself nephew. Lee’s traumatic past makes way for new beginnings, new relationships, and the hope of redemption.
If you look for originality in storytelling, there is little of it here. Painful battles with inner demons is a cliché, and fighting several at once is simply a compound cliché not something new. Half of this film is spent on assembling the narrative jigsaw so we can understand what makes Lee the way he is, and the other half is spent on standard melodrama tropes about re-connecting by caring for someone else. However, it is the casting, characterisation, and cinematography that save this film from being just another story of angry people destabilised by tragedy. Casey Affleck does trauma and ambivalence very effectively. His bemused tolerance of his nephew’s demands and sexual exploits becomes the emotional scaffold that guides his calming from pot-boiling anger to resigned acceptance that life must go on. Lucas Hedges is the perfect foil for Casey Affleck, and both are helped by a strong support ensemble.
Brilliant acting by Affleck does not hide the film’s melodramatic predictability. But this slow essay on anger would be more unsettling were it not for its joyful filming. Trauma is calmed and un-likable characters forgiven when all are nestled against beautiful images of bobbing fishing vessels lapping the shores of charming Manchester by the Sea. The camerawork visually warms the film and helps bind its elements into an engaging story of loss and redemption.Hide
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The Press Reviews
95%
of critics recommend.
Rotten Tomatoes Score. More reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
[A] beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama about how a death in the family forces a small-town New Englander to confront a past tragedy anew. Full Review
A wrenching family tragedy is dramatised with the depth of a high-quality American stage piece in Manchester by the Sea. Full Review
Manchester-by-the-Sea is a study of family dysfunction and the worse loss imaginable, but one held back by the fact it's all filtered through Affleck's withdrawn lead. Full Review
Its world is cruel and chaotic, but it unfolds with purpose and grace. Full Review
An emotional powerhouse with the weave of great literature. Full Review
"Manchester by the Sea" is a finely shaded portrait, a study in individual misery set in a place that is observed with care and affection. Full Review
"Manchester By the Sea" is heartbreaking yet somehow heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity and its access to despair. Full Review
Although filled to the brim with star power and chock-full of the most dramatic extremes of the human experience, Manchester by the Sea never feels big or bloated or "too much". Full Review
I quite happily cried my eyes out twice watching this film. Full Review
BY Matt Glasby Flicks Writer
For an Oscar hopeful, writer/director Kenneth (You Can Count On Me, Margaret) Lonergan's wry, wrenching drama begins in about as mundane a manner as can be.... More
In a role earmarked for Matt Damon, who produces, Casey Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a glum Boston janitor for whom beer and bar fights provide life's only fleeting pleasures. Think: Good Will Hunting, sans mates and maths.
When his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies, Lee is called back to his hometown, the eponymous Massachusetts port, to play guardian to his 16-year-old nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges), even though - as Lee protests -"I'm just the back up." There's no easy redemption here, and the pair’s interactions are alternately frosty, funny and awkward, with Lee’s depressed diffidence threatening to suffocate the whole film - until, that is, what's really wrong becomes apparent.
As a broken man trapped in a situation he can't shrug or slug his way out of, Affleck has never been better. Hedges, who looks just like Damon, excels as his horny, angry charge. And Michelle Williams, as Lee’s ex-wife Randi, makes a no-doubt Oscar-winning impression in just a handful of heartfelt scenes. Lonergan, meanwhile, makes clever use of disarming details - mumbled miscommunications, misfiring props, a misplaced car - to undercut any melodrama.
What emerges is as subtle as it is shattering: ordinary, unshowy and, underneath, red raw with real feelings. If, as one critic noted, Lee has no Good Will Hunting-style "It’s not your fault” moment, that's because, a) life’s never that simple, and b) it’s just not that type of film.Hide
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