At the heart of Kenneth Lonergan's work is the sobering notion that people don't change. Even when faced with the prospect of personal growth, the New York-based filmmaker's fallible, fascinating characters keep reverting to old patterns. Try as they might, these leopards can't change their spots.
So why are his downers so uplifting? Why are his sharply observed portraits of people trapped in their misery so rich, and so darn entertaining?
Casey Affleck in "Manchester by the Sea." Photos: Claire Folger, Courtesy of Amazon Studios and Roadside Attractions.
Perhaps the reason why his work resonates so strongly is that he's aware that whenever calamity rears its unwelcome head, humor is lurking behind a nearby corner. He understands that what divides tragedy and comedy is a line finer than many dramatists would have you believe.
And there are few films that straddle that border as nimbly, and as affectingly, as “Manchester by the Sea,” his devastating, and often very funny, third feature.
Lonergan's unfortunate sap this time around is Lee Chandler, a handyman and janitor at a Boston apartment building. As the movie opens, Lonergan, who also wrote the deftly structured screenplay, takes viewers through a work day so soul-crushing, it's no wonder his protagonist never cracks a smile, not even when he overhears one of the tenants confess to a girlfriend over the phone that she harbors sexual fantasies about him. (There are other reasons for his constant sour mood, as we eventually find out.)
Lee is played by Casey Affleck as a walking void. There is skin and muscle and blood, yes, but also a black hole where recognizable human conduct should be. Whatever spark his eyes may have had at some point has vanished. Numbness has taken its place. When picking a bar fight with a couple of successful yuppies, you feel the character's emotional exhaustion and hesitation prior to him lashing out.
Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges in "Manchester by the Sea."
But Lee's day is about to get worse. He gets a phone call informing him that his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has died. And so he makes the drive home, to his seaside hometown of Manchester-by-the-Sea.
“Cardiac arrest. His heart gave out,” Lee is told at the hospital, at the start of a sequence that could have settled for pathos but instead grows increasingly surreal in its matter-of-fact depiction of managing the affairs of the recently deceased. An elevator ride to the morgue becomes a gateway to the past, as Lee remembers the time he visited Joe at the same hospital, when they found out about the heart condition that would kill the older sibling.
The flashback, the first of several peppered throughout the film, might have ground a more mundane drama to a halt, but here the storytelling device is so fluid and seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the narrative that it would be impossible to imagine the film without these windows to the past. At 137 minutes, “Manchester by the Sea” is not short, but one gets the impression every scene was meticulously thought out, down to each shot placement. The film might feel leisurely at times, but there is an urgency here, simmering beneath the surface, that prevents it from feeling too long.
At the reading of the will, Joe's lawyer (Josh Hamilton) informs Lee that his brother has given him guardianship of Patrick (Lucas Hedges), his teenage nephew. Lee would just as well hand over the kid to George (C.J. Wilson), Joe's work partner, but it looks like he's stuck honoring his brother's wishes. For now.
Lonergan eschews familial bonding clichés as Lee continues to think more about the disruption to his routine than about the fact his nephew is going through his own grieving process. The teen, who's been doing some lashing out of his own on the hockey field, pretends he doesn't need his uncle to fulfill parental duties, but who is he kidding?
Michelle Williams and Casey Affleck in "Manchester by the Sea."
Despite their different ways of coping with loss, Patrick and Lee end up gravitating toward each other, much like Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo's estranged siblings in Lonergan's debut feature “You Can Count on Me.” The teen sublimates his pain by jamming with his spectacularly mediocre garage band and romancing two girls who are unaware of the other's existence. It's refreshing to see a frank, nonjudgmental depiction of teenage sexuality, and in this case, Lonergan uses to strike an ironic contrast with the lack of it in Lee's part.
Lee's extended stay in Manchester also brings up another face from the past: Randi (Michelle Williams), his ex-wife. To say the pair parted on unfriendly terms would be a sizable understatement. She extends an olive branch, but he is reluctant to reconnect. It's not until the halfway point that Lonergan reveals the extent of the former couple's demons, and this is where “Manchester by the Sea” truly excels. I was reminded at times of great fiction, like Anne Tyler's “The Accidental Tourist,” a novel (and film) that's particularly adept at showing how emotionally stunted people process grief.
The flashbacks gradually, inexorably fill in the missing pieces, until we find ourselves dwelling in the characters' despair. They are walking among the shadows of a trauma that still feels immediate to them, and we march alongside them until we feel their heartbreak deep in our bones.
There is no breakthrough in store for Lee. Not much of a chance he will ever be able to turn the page. This monster is too formidable to slay. But by showing us the unspeakable in such casual, unassuming terms, by encouraging us not to look away, and by letting echoes from the past inform the present, Lonergan has made the most vital American film I've seen this year. In spite of its unexpected laughs, it refuses to soften its blows, and is all the stronger because of it.
“Manchester by the Sea” is now showing at several area theaters, including the Coral Gables Art Cinema. It is also scheduled to screen at the Miami Beach Cinematheque sometime next month as part of its third annual Film Independent Spirit Awards Retrospective.
