National Post (National Edition)
Adoptive identity
MANCHESTER BY THE SEA IS ABOUT LOVE, LOSS AND FINDING YOURSELF IN OTHERS
When we first meet Lee Chandler in Manchester by the Sea, he doesn’t seem like a very memorable character. Sullen at best, surly at worst, he holds down a custodial job in a nondescript apartment block in Boston. He lives in the basement, his only decor are three small, framed photos.
But listen to the reaction of a secretary at his nephew’s school when he comes to collect the teenager: “LEE Chandler?” The principal replies: “The very one.” And when he catches up with Patrick (Lucas Hedges) at hockey practice, the coach is taken aback: “THE Lee Chandler?”
Clearly, something momentous has happened in Lee Chandler’s life — maybe it’s the same thing that makes him pick random fights in bars, or answer questions with a monosyllable, or less. Maybe he’s always been like that. The very first scene shows him horsing around with a much younger Patrick on his brother’s boat, so who knows?
Viewers will find out everything in good time, but first they and Lee (Casey Affleck, radiating an awards-worthy moroseness) will have to deal with a more immediate tragedy: the death of his brother, Joe (played by Kyle Chandler), a single father who had a good heart but also, anatomically speaking, a bad one.
Joe’s passing leaves Lee and Patrick scrambling and struggling to figure out what to do. The boy is distraught but also distracted, not least by having to juggle two girlfriends (Anna Baryshnikov, Kara Hayward) and a band with the you-haveto-be-16-to-call-it-this name of Stentorian. A trip to Joe’s lawyer drops another bomb on Lee: his brother has chosen him to be Patrick’s guardian.
Lee’s own distraction plays out mostly in flashbacks, so seamlessly integrated into the weft of the film that viewers may get as lost in his reveries as he does. Key to these memories is Randi, Lee’s ex-wife, delicately portrayed by Michelle Williams. Manchester by the Sea is a film about identity — who we are, who we’re not, who we used to be, tried to be, can’t be — and Randi clearly carries her own novel’s worth of backstory, even as the film focuses more intensely on Lee.
The screenplay and direction is by Kenneth Lonergan, a playwright and screenwriter whose directing debut was the wonderfully observed You Can Count on Me (2000), which brought Laura Linney her first Oscar nomination, and shone a light on a 33-year-old Mark Ruffalo. That one had a similar quality of keening sadness, undercut by hope; these characters are lost, and we desperately want them to find themselves, perhaps even in one another.
Affleck is ideal in this role, but props also to the 20-year-old Hedges, whose film career already includes two by Wes Anderson (Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel) and one by Terry Gilliam (The Zero Theorem). Clearly, he’s doing something right; here, he manages a simmering filial anger that never boils over into hyperbole. And almost forgettable, because he makes no mistakes to draw attention to himself, is C.J. Wilson as an old family friend.
The soundtrack is a melancholic, almost melodramatic affair, full of selections from Handel’s Messiah and other classical and neo-classical works. When Ella Fitzgerald and The Ink Spots strike up I’m Beginning to See the Light from 1945, the change of pace may make you want to get up and dance.
That’s not to say the film isn’t enjoyable. There are moments of levity, not least when crosstalk and miscommunications have people all but shouting at one another from within the same room. And there are significant take-aways, about the importance of family, and (given the seaside setting) of boats. Manchester by the Sea may take its time making itself heard, but you can count on it. ΩΩΩΩ