Long battle with grief
Tragedy at film’s core
(8) MANCHESTER BY THE SEA. Directed by: Kenneth Lonergan. Starring: Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler, Gretchen Mol. Showing at: Walmer Park. Reviewed by: Tim Robey
MANCHESTER by the Sea is about a loss so unmentionable it cannot and will not be mentioned, because the whole structure of the film, Kenneth Lonergan’s third as a writerdirector, demands that we wait to discover what it is. It begins, though, with a smaller tragedy – the heart attack of a Massachusetts dad in the prime of his life.
This man is Joe, whom we meet only in flashbacks, played by the reliably excellent Kyle Chandler, who coincidentally shares his surname. The main character is his brother, Lee, who rushes to the hospital too late to say his goodbyes.
What’s clear is that the two brothers said a goodbye many years before, and haven’t stayed in touch a lot, because Lee has twisted himself away from every attachment he ever used to have.
Minor characters call him “The Lee Chandler?”, incredulous to find him back in town, after the thing, the unmentionable thing, which looked to have driven him away forever.
Barricaded inside the shell that’s become of him, Lee peers at the world through guarded eyes, only just summoning the basic drive to get up every morning, shuffle out and carry on his tasks.
He’s played by Casey Affleck in a clenched and riveting performance which fulfils all the promise he’s ever shown and then some.
Lee is a janitor for four buildings in the town of Quincy, about 48km south of where he used to live.
The various tenants, whose plumbing he fixes, and electrics (illegally), and other odd jobs, give us clues to his personality – when one woman takes out her irritation on him, he holds his ground with a tight flash of contempt. Another likes him, but he bashfully retreats – not impolitely. There’s just no getting through to him. He picks a fight in a bar with two well-dressed guys, for no reason, except that he’s drunk, angry, and hates his life.
Lonergan lets the past trickle into his film in increments; crucial scenes, carefully placed, each triggered by where the characters are and what they might be thinking about. An exchange with a doctor in a hospital lift brings us back to the moment when Joe was first diagnosed, before Lee pays his last respects in the mortuary room.
Unlike Joe’s best friend, openly sobbing in the corridor, Lee blinks back his grief in this scene; Affleck conveys it to us as a spent commodity, something depleted in him deep down.
Lee discovers he has been named as guardian in Joe’s will to his 16-year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges), whose impossible mother (Gretchen Mol) walked out on them in despair to form a new family.
The prominence of Michelle Williams on the poster gives the impression that Lee’s dealings with his ex-wife Randi dominate the film, but Williams is sparingly used – it’s his relationship with this nephew that dominates.
Grief is a war here in which Lee has lost battle after battle; his opponent, when we finally get a look, simply can’t be vanquished by the usual redemptive devices. This wounded underdog may persist and survive, but it’s very possible he’ll never come back to life.