Grade: B+
Writer/director/playwright Kenneth Lonergan has occupied a significant space in my memory and heart ever since I saw his uniquely enjoyable You Can Count On Me, which made my top 5 list in 2000. His eclectic writing credits include Analyze This, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Gangs of New York, and an episode of the Nickelodeon show Doug. His play This is Our Youth was produced at Theatre in the Square in Marietta GA, sometime in the mid-late 2000s. What struck me about the aforementioned YCCOM was how natural and authentically it portrayed real life, awkwardly delivered conversations and all. Upon turning to IMDB to research his work history, I learn with surprise that You Can Count On Me was his directorial debut, and even more taken aback to see that as a director, his new movie Manchester by the Sea is only his third. Manchester gets dark, dirty, and difficult, but it is a treat to take this journey. A single man living in a modest basement-like room in Boston who works as a handy man receives news that his brother up in Manchester has died of congestive heart failure, and to his shock, finds out by reading his will that the brother has made him the guardian to his teenage boy. (The mother, a blackout alcoholic, has been out of the picture for a long time.) The uncle, who always got along famously with the boy, is having trouble processing this news, as he was never told about this while the boy’s father was still alive.
I could give you more plot, as many flashback scenes weave in and out of the action and fill in many blanks for us, but I’ll leave you to uncover those, as what I said above is what we’re given right off the bat. Performances are superb across the board. The chemistry between Oscar nominees Casey Affleck and Lucas Hedges as the uncle and nephew is nothing short of magnificent. I felt like they really had spent a lifetime together. The score got too intrusive and distracting for my tastes. The loud string music in a flashback that delivered some crucial information was excessive, and its sheer volume threatened to drown out the dialogue I was straining to hear.
Lonergan’s writing here rings so true to life. Unlike so many screenplays, nobody is that clever and eloquent all the time. People stutter, stammer, and get confused sometimes, and Lonergan picks up on these tics. This is a movie full of awkward pauses and people talking over each other, and making choices that stray from the obvious. Affleck’s character turns down advances from at least 3 women who are quite easy on the eyes. This is a film to see multiple times, as it will likely “unfold” for you and reveal more with repeated viewings. I considered giving it a higher rating than what I settled on. If everything had been neatly wrapped up in the conclusion, it would have felt artificial, and Lonergan’s films are anything but. He does not work with a cookie cutter. The ending feels like more could and will happen. It’s not a period, it’s an ellipsis. I guess that’s why these are called “slice-of-life” movies.
Grade: B+
Film Reviews by Mark 
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