Man­ches­ter by the Sea

There is too much going on in Man­ches­ter by the Sea and still it is among the best films of this or any year. It is too fun­ny, too trag­ic, and too full of nods to all man­ner of movie gen­res. It is an odd cou­ple bud­dy movie, a mys­tery unfold­ing via flash­back, a fam­i­ly melo­dra­ma, a nat­u­ral­is­tic com­e­dy, an insur­mount­able tragedy and an ele­gy for peo­ple liv­ing with their inter­nal flame extin­guished. Mirac­u­lous­ly, all these ele­ments are bound togeth­er by the bril­liant­ly humane writ­ing of Ken­neth Lon­er­gan which is then paired with pow­er­ful per­for­mances by Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck.

Affleck plays Lee, a stony-faced jan­i­tor liv­ing alone in the cell-like base­ment of a Boston apart­ment block. This set-up fol­lows a con­trast­ing title cred­it set-up in which Lee jokes mer­ri­ly with a young boy on a boat while his old­er broth­er, Joe (Kyle Chan­dler), takes the helm. That was then. When, we don’t know. In the present, Lee does the rounds of his build­ing, mak­ing repairs and remain­ing impas­sive as ten­ants reveal their enter­tain­ing foibles. He is polite and soft­ly-spo­ken until riled. Out­bursts, either ver­bal or expressed through his fists, are a vital outlet.

Affleck excels at play­ing men whose inten­si­ty is chan­nelled in uncom­fort­able ways cli­max­ing in tragedy (Ain’t Them Bod­ies Saints, The Assas­si­na­tion of Jesse James, The Killer Inside Me). What is new this time is restraint. Lee has cul­ti­vat­ed a life that’s like he’s trapped with­in a sen­so­ry depri­va­tion tank. Only when his brother’s death prompts a return to the title sequence port town of Man­ches­ter is his back sto­ry teased out, and so too his par­tic­u­lar rea­son for bow­ing out of human entanglements.

Enter Patrick (Hedges), the boy from the boat who is now a father­less teenag­er. Bereave­ment aside, Patrick has an envi­ably full and healthy life: school, friends, hock­ey team, a band, two girl­friends. His alco­holic moth­er is AWOL so it falls to Lee to at least tem­porar­i­ly act as guardian. Lon­er­gan, with the help of his com­mit­ted cast, buries his emo­tion­al land­mine deep with­in the sprawl of every­day life.

Each scene brims with self-con­tained humour and dra­ma, regard­less of whether it moves the sto­ry along or sim­ply fills in back­ground colour. Moment-by-moment there are absorb­ing plea­sures root­ed in Lonergan’s com­mand of dia­logue. As in his pre­vi­ous fea­tures, 2000’s You Can Count on Me, and 2011’s Mar­garet, char­ac­ters com­mu­ni­cate with a zing­ing curt­ness that would be bruis­ing if not for the com­pas­sion extend­ed in small atten­tive acts.

An hour in and the emo­tion­al land­mine goes off. It changes every­thing and noth­ing. We learn why Lee is no longer with his ex-wife Ran­di (Michelle Williams). The mov­ing nature of this film relates to indi­vid­ual moments rather than a grand arc. Williams has a flair for vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. Affleck has access to such rav­ages that it makes you won­der about the state of his soul. Hedges is a young mas­ter of com­ic tim­ing. Lon­er­gan catch­es you in the minu­ti­ae of ordi­nary liv­ing, so when the emo­tion of extra­or­di­nary tragedy sud­den­ly erupts, it is stunning.