A movie that you don't feel like a part of your life. Kidnapped in a foreign atmosphere. Good cinema removes the man from his roots, packs new emotions into his suitcase, and sends it to the epicenter of the unknown. Good art moves, thinks. "Manchester by the Sea" is a very rare breed movie. Regarding the script, the film is brilliant. Not brilliant as "Fight Club" is brilliant - this is the obvious swatter of the shocking story. The Manchester machine is crushed differently - we have a simple, anticipated situation. (Two brothers, one dying and the other returning to his hometown to settle the stash, to understand what has happened lately and to become a guardian for his nephew.) However, this expected situation blooms to the size of the most basic and recognizable for human emotion genres. The film starts out as a bitter comedy, which overflows into a tragedy and then returns to a neutral situation again. Like a storm in a glass. Encapsulated and framed, but still - emotionally, impressively and memorably. One of the most successful ways to make a good film today is to tell a story. Currently, "Westworld" does. Christopher Nolan has already done it several times with Inception and Interstellar. The popular concept of a movie is actually the expectation that a committed and unusual story will be told. However, there is the other type of narrative. Still perceived by some as art, boutique, unnecessary. When the person moves the action when the character in the center turns into the bearer of the whole charge of the movie and as if the story is happening for what it is. Then the character really becomes a hero, because he creates the world that he should probably create. There are many such films, but it is very difficult for them to be successful. Few are really good. "Manchester by the Sea" is one of them.
Every scene is a key. It is very difficult to write a scenario in which almost everything is based on simple situations (driving, talking, drinking beer) and at the same time each scene is engaging or not too unrealistic (striving to be just the opposite ). This is the first huge red dot for the script of Kenneth Lonergan (who is also a director). The second goes to the decision about the structure of history. Nonlinear. The viewer is introduced to the situation where Lee (the beautiful Casey Affleck) works as a cleaner, plumber and whats not even on a minimum wage and lives in a miserly narrow room without furniture. He seems to be constantly depressed / bumped into bars. Has something happening in this person's life to be such or is it another movie that will just show us the ugly, dull reality of the average bitch? Wonderful scenario-tight and comical from the very beginning scenes, however, distract the suspicion that the film will become more aggressive. Lee realizes that his brother (Kyle Chandler) has died. He has to go to Manchester (and be close to the sea where he spent most of his life). There is a gradual discovery of his relationship with relatives, friends, and the invasion of all the memories of a previous life. Dialogues and situations often alternate with the salty landscapes of the harbor, gulls, floured water, and the gray winter sea. There is one frame in which the snow is raining, raining, and then simply - as if for a blink of an eye - it stops. It is so fragile and poetic to the film's atmosphere that he often takes advantage of the usual details that almost all other films would consider to be superfluous. Several times while I was watching, I caught myself smiling at a director's decision: "Did you really do that !? Wow, how did you think about it? "And as a person who watches a lot of movies, I can tell you that such a child's amazement does not happen in many movie (even with any good film).
Because I concluded that Casey Affleck's hero is the most important part of the movie, let me fix it and say there are two other characters that are great. One is Patrick (played by Lucas Hegezis). We see it for the first time on ice, playing hockey. At the same time his uncle is coming to look for him. Bad signal. As his teammates say, the uncle comes only when Patrick's father is bad. And the first thing we hear from Patrick's mouth is how he curses. Patrick is a clever 16-year-old boy. He is not saved by the fact that death is always around the corner - his father suffers from a sick heart and his mother is a "crazy alcoholic." And it definitely shows him he is more mature than he should be at the age of 16. Which in no way makes it baffled and tedious, as are many teenagers, imagined to be in a serious conflict with life. Patrick and his uncle were close when Patrick was small. Now the situation is a bit different. Lee was not there when Patrick grew up, he did not know his interests and his life. The two are still alike - they love the sport for example. Somehow they love peace and appreciate their privacy. The spectator, with a smile, watches them getting closer and closer (despite the obvious conflict between them) and how ultimately their attitudes stand out strongest: they hold each other.
There is no emotion in the whole movie that is thrown at the viewer as a sand in the eyes to make him feel sympathetic to where he is. "Manchester by the Sea" is not tearful. It's not dramatizing. This is a very well-written film in which there is no gram of fake. The other important character (albeit not right in proportion to his screen time) is Lee's former wife, Randy (Michelle Williams). In one scene to the end, in a few minutes, she said things that chewed me and spit. I felt sorrow, relief, shame and guilt at the same time. And then a lump in the throat unfolded. I think it's hard to make a good drama at the moment. With so many stories, visions, ideas, it should be terribly difficult to impress anyone with anything, but it does not seem to be the case. People are looking for the authentic feeling and, when served with taste and refinement, they tend to indulge in the same well-known story over and over again. As much as we love the contraptions, we have a solid relationship with reality, with the human experience.