Manchester by the Sea

Manchester by the Sea, written and directed by playwright Kenneth Lonergan, tells the story of a blue-collar family in the titular town north of Boston, Mass. Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a loner janitor from Manchester now exiled to Boston, when he gets a phone call: His brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) is dying. The will stipulates that Lee is now the guardian to his 16-year-old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges), a role he considers out of the question. We discover why as the film unfolds through a series of flashbacks piecing together the family history.

This is no Anne of Green Gables, where the endearing orphan wins the affections of the gruff, unwilling adoptive parent. The critical hype around this film gives it Oscar prospects and five Golden Globe nominations; but if you go, you’ll see a grim film with a well-deserved R rating for very heavy cursing throughout, sexual content involving teenage Patrick and his girlfriend, and some intense fighting sequences.

Lonergan’s realism also makes the film move slowly at times: It runs at 2 hours and 17 minutes. Some of the scenes, like a dinner Patrick has at his girlfriend’s house with her mom, seem unnecessary to the plot but build understanding of daily stress and toil: When a package of frozen chicken falls out of the freezer, Patrick bends down, picks up the package, smacks his head on the freezer door as he straightens back up—and that unleashes pent-up emotions.

This film comes across like the New England version of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a best-selling memoir about Vance’s rough blue-collar upbringing in West Virginia that came out this year. The themes of Vance’s book parallel Manchester: broken families, addiction, slim job prospects, and a sense of lost pride that leads to bar fights when someone looks at you the wrong way. Lee and Patrick are Catholic, but don’t appear devout—Patrick describes his stepfather, in contrast to himself, as “very Christian,” and the stepfather of course comes across as very controlling and uncaring. That scene is a stuffy caricature of a devout Christian.

Everyone Lee and Patrick encounter in the town seems to have lost a father too early. Lee becomes an unwilling wingman to his new charge’s sexual adventures—initially this subplot seems like a detour, but it helps Lee determine his role in the boy’s life. It also shows that Lee is too traumatized by guilt to know how to handle relationships now—and Affleck’s portrayal of brokenness puts him correctly on the Oscar shortlist. Flashbacks in the movie show him as a different man, joyfully teasing his young nephew about an incoming school of sharks while they’re out on Joe’s boat.

Lee’s transformation as a character shows the extent of our curse here on earth: Nothing finite can fill the void of death and heartache resulting from a selfish act that leads to tragedy. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy has redemptive passages, but the one indication in this film that life can be better comes in the soundtrack, which includes numerous Handel pieces, some from Messiah. “He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd,” which plays over a key scene, includes the Matthew 11:28-29 line, “Come unto Him, all ye that labour, come unto Him that are heavy laden, and He will give you rest.”