MANCHESTER BY THE SEA: A Death in the Family

Director: Kenneth Lonergan
Writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Cast: Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams
Runtime: 137 mins.
2016

Manchester by the Sea is an iceberg movie. Rather than pursue the melodramatic structure of a classical tragedy, wherein misfortune after misfortune get heaped upon an individual until they are crushed by the weight of it, Manchester features characters already anchored by past tragedy. When the not-unexpected death of a family member kicks off the plot, nobody breaks down. The characters handle it with weariness and gravitas as we are given watery glimpses into the mass of sorrow that lurks beneath the surface.

The main character in question is Lee (Casey Affleck), a man. Unlike most movies, it is vitally important that Lee be a man, as Manchester is very much about a particularly masculine flavor of grief. Lee is stoic, silent. The iceberg of masculine emotional self-abnegation paralyzes him, disallows vulnerability, kills new connections before they've even begun. When his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies and leaves Lee to be the caretaker of his son Patrick (Lucas Hedges), Lee must reconcile his self-exile from the world with his newfound responsibility for one of the only people remaining in the world that he cares about.

Lee is a broken man, and Manchester is a rare movie that doesn't shy away from what that means. Stories typically feature trauma and catharsis, but rarely tangle with the long slog of depression. Lee's character doesn't have a traditional narrative arc, so the expertly-timed flashbacks have the crucial role of filling him out and making him more dynamic even as he stagnates in the present.

The film is paced like breathing. The masterful editing by Jennifer Lame sets that pace, weaving time jumps in and out of the primary narrative so organically that the cuts themselves are a commentary on the unshakability of trauma, as the difficult memories creep at the corners of every new experience. Even the warmest moments, the moments that could lead to change, are merely the point before another exhale. There is no satisfying progress.

In other hands this story could have been a drag, but Lonergan makes Manchester into a living, breathing experience. All silence speaks volumes, and each act of chilliness is buffered by a gesture of warmth and humanity. Manchester questions whether life is worth living, but always provides counterpoints. So much of this is on the back of Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges, who are tasked with saying so much with so little. Hedges does the audience surrogate work of trying to draw connections out of Lee without becoming annoying, while we too lean forward and wait expectactly on Lee's words, or lack thereof. Meanwhile Patrick has his own journey through mourning and burgeoning adulthood.

Manchester by the Sea could accurately be described as Sad White Man: The Movie, but it is a particularly sophisticated iteration of that formula. The form of proto-masculinity that it explores feels particularly resonant right now. As the old guard of masculinity reasserts itself as radical and reactionary, and the new guard of masculinity tries to navigate the liberating, entrapping tangle of identity politics, those caught in the middle cannot process the weight of their impotence and purposelessness, and are stricken to silence.

4 / 5  BLOBS