THE film Manchester By the Sea doesn’t tug you at your heartstring; it draws you to listen to its stories. There you find the hearts and their capability to withstand pain and, maybe just maybe, nurture some hope
One of these stories is that of Lee’s. He is a janitor and handyman in a building. We see him shoveling snow. Alone, he is good. With the tenants in the building, he is aloof, unable to make any suggestion. He is clumsy with the ladies, irritating one for his candor that’s found to be abrasive. Lee’s boss thinks the former needs to be more sociable but Lee has, it seems, withdrawn from any social dealings with other people.
Away from his job, he goes to a bar. There he thinks two gentlemen are looking at him badly. He picks up a fight with them, proving that Lee has volatile and violent temper.
No trait, at this point, makes him attractive, except his solitude and a very sharp loneliness that shrouds and protects him.
One day, Lee receives a call from Manchester by the sea: his brother Joe had a heart attack. Lee apparently had a happy life before in that scenic town. A series of flashbacks shows us Lee with a very warm relationship with a brother who owns a boat. He is also Uncle Lee to a nephew, Patrick, who worships him. Death has brought back Lee to a place where he had life.
In Manchester Lee starts preparing for the funeral of his brother, even as he begins to get to know that small boy, his nephew now grownup at 16.
It’s difficult for Lee to bond with Patrick amid the depressing backdrop of death. There is, as well, given the geographical distance between the uncle and the nephew. Patrick, like any young man of his generation, doesn’t seem to care much for emotional link. Patrick doesn’t even acknowledge the demise of his father—or, perhaps, he has a way of submerging his sorrow somewhere and replacing it with sarcasm and smart-alecky remarks.
It takes awhile before the other stories in this tale unfold. When they do, instead of dragging down the tale into the bottomless pit of melancholia and hopelessness, it opens up to a vista of compelling human struggles, of memories irredeemable, and men and women caught between the sea and the land both forgiving and unforgiving,
As Lee, Casey Affleck, delivers a masterful performance as a man who loses everything. He attempts to commit suicide but the law stops him so he could find order in a life that is now without meaning. We don’t know what will bring back Lee from the pit, and Affleck makes us look into that abyss by defining a person whose withdrawal from the world is the only sign that he still is living in this world.
Affleck’s Lee is not a ball of seething rage; he is a collapsing universe of desolation and denial. Affleck makes it difficult for us for a long time to find a space where we could see his humanity again. When we do, it is with his nephew, Patrick, as they walk together unsure of the future. He tells Patrick that the new place he is looking for has a space for him—and hope again for the two of them
There are so many good things to say about the film. In one scene, Lee meets on the street his ex-wife, Randi. They find time to be alone. Randi, played by Michelle Williams, offers voluminous explanations and apologies for all the hurtful and hateful words she had uttered during their divorce. In a virtuoso counterpoint, Afflect mumbles, grunts, whispers incoherently as he is unable to connect to any past with his wife. One can almost see the words from Williams spewing out and the sounds from Affleck that seem to come from nowhere, token sounds from someone desperately trying to link up, but is otherwise torn from anything that leads to any understanding. When Lee/Affleck runs away, we are left with a landscape bleak beyond habitation.
Music is another fascinating aspect of Manchester By the Sea. In the bar, Ray Charles sings “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”, a dark tongue-in-cheek background to Lee’s readiness for violence.
And when “Adagio in G-Minor”, commonly attributed to Albinioni, soars after some tragic events, we know that many human hearts have fallen and are waiting to be rescued.
Kenneth Lonergan directs Manchester By the Sea. He writes the screenplay, which won him the Oscar this year.
Casey Affleck took home the Best Actor prize. No one can and will question that.