Manchester by the Sea

Manchester-by-the-Sea isn’t really a village that I would like to visit, even though I normally like similar areas and I actively seek them out. But what can you do with people who look as if they had been taking Xanax for two years, surviving in their strange vacuum of nothingness. Well, and Casey Affleck is rooted in this world, and probably wants to get an Oscar nomination because he is the weirdest of the weirdest and in some scenes he literally jumps between emotions like a flea from one hair to another. It’s a pity, as under diferrent circumstances this film wouldn’t be bad. But its endless length and the strange behavior of the characters doesn’t simply make for a good movie and the few interesting scenes unfortunately can’t save the movie. (02/21/2017)

A painful punch right to the heart. A film whose author must be on the same frequency as I, because I understood every scene. Everything was in its place, everything made sense. It’s been a long time since I felt 137 minutes passing so fast, even though on paper they should have dragged (and judging by the comments, they did drag for many people). (02/03/2017)

A drama that does not hold your hand, forces you to read between the lines, and does so on a canvas over two hours long that does not begin with careless and ordinary dialogues full of chatter. Casey Affleck has found the role of his life, Michelle Williams shines even in a smaller space, and Kenneth Lonergan has created a drama that is almost too absolute and overwhelming to be heartfelt. Still, I wish him all the success in the awards season. (02/02/2017)

The stroller scene is so powerful and realistic that it seems as though it’s not acted at all. The entire film is based on realism; it is an unusually detailed visit to a certain place, its atmosphere and way of life, an insight into the privacy and intimacy of its inhabitants. With the main character, we experience a crazy drama without the creators trying to make us sympathize with him (on the contrary, he is an irresponsible yokel). The film is extraordinary thanks both to the acting performances and the depiction of everyday life, which is something that’s not often seen in movies (e.g. a great, seemingly unnecessary scene involving the search for a parked car). (03/22/2017)

This review contains minor spoilers. Manchester by the Sea is one of the most useful film simulators for living with a broken heart. You can either let tragedy paralyze you completely or you can maintain a certain detachment from it – as Lonergan does, and as the protagonists of Manchester by the Sea also try to do. The film does not restore the status quo or reassure us that everything will be all right again. The real catharsis and return to harmony captured in a few flashbacks do not come, just as deliverance and at least some form of satisfaction after a similar tragedy may never come in real life. This is not the only departure from the conventions of American family melodramas, which usually offer simple solutions to similar dilemmas. The tragedy is not caused by fate, against which one can do nothing, but by human error; the characters are not rendered in black-and-white and, unlike the protagonists of ordinary melodramas, they are largely unable to externalise their emotions. Rather, their emotions are expressed for them through flashbacks and solemn music, which at the same time make us aware of the constant (and paradoxical) presence of loss, of an empty place (even more painful on second viewing are the mentions of the children in the dialogue – the man who repairs the dripping faucet for Lee speaks about his sister and her children; the doctor reports that the nurse Bethany has just given birth to twin girls). Like the female protagonist of Lonergan’s previous film, Patrick and Lee mainly have to learn to overcome the communication barrier and to find adequate words to describe the misfortune that they have endured (as, for example, the man whose boiler Lee repairs at the end has no problem with it and who uninhibitedly launches into a story about his father’s death). Unlike Lisa, however, they do not act melodramatically, despite the melodramatic potential of the situations in which they find themselves. Conversely, even the scenes that are shot with operatic exaggeration are disrupted by their unwillingness to let themselves be fully overcome by grief (Patrick’s ringing phone during the memorial service). People die, but the lives of those they leave behind go on. Manchester by the Sea, a melodrama that doesn’t want to be a melodrama, is thus for me not only a superbly written and acted drama about insurmountable loss, but also a film that is both formalistically and stylistically inspiring. 85% (02/10/2017)