Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Directed by Kenneth Lonergan
After his older brother passes away, Lee Chandler is forced to return home to care for his 16-year-old nephew. There he is compelled to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his family and the community where he was born and raised.
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The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
It isn’t a weepie, although its classical score tugs it close to such tastefully lachrymose classics as Robert Redford’s Ordinary People.
The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
Manchester By The Sea resembles Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, but Lonergan’s film has even greater humanity, a sense of humor and a precise observational mode that understands that life, in all its randomness, franticness and beauty, must continue during the grieving process, even if most movies make it seem like responsibilities and desires sleep for grief and sorrow.
He has entwined a present-day narrative with flashback sequences somewhat in the manner of Atom Egoyan’s jigsaw stories like “The Sweet Hereafter,” but with fresh, well-defined characters and a story all his own.
Think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces or, hey, Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.
He reminds of the Adam Sandler character in Punch-Drunk Love.
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Patrick is quick to summon friends, just as quick to let the subject among them change to silly “Star Trek” debates — in “Saturday Night Light” thick Massachusetts working-class accents.
He also has to contend with being back home in the North Shore area of Massachusetts, where everyone is hilariously tetchy, whose denizens don’t wait more than a few hours after a funeral to argue heatedly about “Star Trek.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation now,” says a girlfriend of Patrick’s, as news of his father’s death segues into a discussion of the merits of Star Trek .
His latest, a quietly powerful examination of grief healed by a brothers' bond, is not only an emotional character-driven drama, but the best realization of Massachusetts on screen since "The Friends of Eddie Coyle."
He’s the son of writer-director Peter Hedges, no stranger to sensitively told tales of life among the emotionally crippled (“Pieces of April,” “Dan in Real Life”).
He’s the son of writer-director Peter Hedges, no stranger to sensitively told tales of life among the emotionally crippled (“Pieces of April,” “Dan in Real Life”).
The death of his beloved older brother Joe ( Kyle Chandler , seen in many generous flashbacks) saddles him with the unexpected responsibility of raising Joe's only son Patrick ( Lucas Hedges , Redford from " Moonrise Kingdom ").
He’s all the kid has left, unless you count Patrick’s two girlfriends (Anna – daughter of Mikhail – Baryshnikov; and Hedge’s “Moonrise Kingdom” costar Kara Hayward), whom he hilariously tries to juggle between hockey practice and rehearsals with his aptly named garage band, Stentorian.
The highlight of the film is the performance from Hedges, a young actor who got his start in “ The Grand Budapest Hotel ” and “Moonrise Kingdom.”
Affleck has a terrific foil in the 19-year-old Hedges (“Moonrise Kingdom,” “Kill the Messenger”), playing Patrick as a ball of rowdy, tempestuous adolescent energy who nonetheless submits with surprising ease to his uncle’s instruction, as though recognizing his need for an authority figure in his father’s absence.
And Kara Hayward, best known as the female lead in Moonrise Kingdom, plays one of Patrick’s two girlfriends.
Patrick bounces between a pair of high school sweethearts: the affably pretentious Sylvie (Kara Hayward, whom you may recognize as the now-post-adolescent girl from Moonrise Kingdom) and the earthy chucklehead Sandy (Anna Baryshnikov—yes, she is the Baryshnikov’s daughter).
This is a story about Lee Chandler (played by Casey Affleck of “Interstellar”) a man haunted by his tragic past, who is very unexpectedly named guardian of his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges of “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) after his brother dies.
Young Hedges, perhaps best known for his appearances in two Wes Anderson films, Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel, has a lot more to work with here and thoroughly impresses.
The highlight of the film is the performance from Hedges, a young actor who got his start in “ The Grand Budapest Hotel ” and “Moonrise Kingdom.”
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“Manchester by the Sea” plays the role in the writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s career that “The Departed” plays in Martin Scorsese’s.
In 21st-century American cinema — from “Mystic River” to “Gone Baby Gone,” from “The Fighter” to “The Departed” — the Bay State is where the myths of post-ethnic -class white identity have been forged.
It’s a familiar rough, tough, hard-luck, working-class Massachusetts set-up, instantly recognizable to anyone who’s seen Mystic River, Black Mass, The Departed, The Fighter, or generally any film starring Matt Damon or Casey’s brother Ben.
Lonergan, 54, who has two previous Oscar nominations for screenwriting for You Can Count on Me and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, depicts grief with great specificity and great power with judicious use of flashbacks.
Director Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me,” “Margaret”) is such skillful writer (he co-wrote the screenplays to “Analyze This” and “Gangs of New York”) that the viewer is constantly kept on the balls of his or her feet, poised in anticipation of information that arrives just when it should, not a moment before.
Martin Scorsese, with whom Lonergan collaborated on the script for Gangs of New York, helped facilitate a 165-minute cut that to my knowledge has never been screened.
And yet Lonergan (who helped write Gangs of New York) scores points by demonstrating the hypocrisy of small-towners who feel obligated to greet their neighbors, but who actually hold each other in contempt.
Manchester By The Sea is written and directed by American playwright, screenwriter, and director, Kenneth Lonergan, whose resume – which includes the screenplays for both Gangs Of New York (2002) and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000) – inspires both immediate trust and concern.
Lonergan revisits the same angry-Irish shtick as in his work on Scorsese’s Gangs of New York , plus the same narcissism of his Upper West Side Manhattan political soap opera Margaret .
The basic premise—about an irresponsible man who suddenly finds himself saddled with the task of looking after a youngster—is one that’s been used innumerable times, in fare ranging from syrupy Hallmark Hall of Fame-style tearjerkers to lousy comedies like Adam Sandler’s “Big Daddy.”