Too often, films are hasty to wrap up neat and nice with a happy ending. While this may satiate audiences, it does very little to replicate a reality in which people don’t always get what they want, life takes unexpected and tragic turns, and some wounds just don’t heal.
Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea does little to leave the viewer feeling warm and satisfied. With the backdrop of a quiet New England winter, one family’s grief – and their community’s response (or lack thereof) – entangles itself in all manners of inescapable knots, leaving one to wonder: how could life possibly go on?
When Patrick’s (Lucas Hedges) father dies, his Uncle Lee (Casey Affleck) heads home to Manchester by the Sea to help his nephew with the funeral arrangements. Upon this return, Lee discovers he has been named Patrick’s legal guardian.
In no position to care for a sixteen-year-old, he tries to convince his nephew to return to Quincy with him. But with a hockey team, garage band, his dad’s old fishing boat, and two girlfriends to leave behind, Patrick is more than reluctant to go. What’s more, Lee is hardly willing to stay in Manchester, as his past haunts him from bar to bar.
The scars inhibiting Lee from properly tending to the issues at hand are revealed almost halfway through the film. While this leaves gnawing questions unanswered for a good hour or so, it allows one to first feel and understand Patrick’s grief and confusion surrounding the death of his father.
It also takes time to set the scene: a wintry fishing town depicted in meditative tracking shots of quaint New England neighborhoods, placid waters speckled with fowl, and trees burdened with snowfall. While Patrick and Lee are reeling in a world of loss and rapid change, the town is quiet and cold, seemingly unaware of the tumult going on within it.
But the recent death hangs in the air. The finality of a funeral is not afforded the Chandlers – the ground is too frozen for burial. While his brother waits in the morgue, Lee’s demons finally come out of the woodwork. Only then does the deep, unending grief he portrays from the start of the film become understandable – and almost too much to bear.
Amidst the sorrow and tragedy, Manchester by the Sea reveals itself to be a true study of character and setting: the grieving of a family within the hibernation of a town. Lucas Hedges’ performance contains both the hesitation and excitement of a youth facing the future, frightening as it may seem. Meanwhile, Casey Affleck carries Lee’s deep scars on his sleeve in a display of self-inflicted suffering that has all the affects of a man who has lost too much to bear.
Yet Lee – along with the rest of Manchester – continues moving forward, as everyone must in the face of loss. When all is said and done, Manchester by the Sea is a testament to the endurance of a family’s will, as well as a memorial to those lost along the way.
Live, Love, Learn,