Manchester By The Sea

UK Release Date. 13 January 2017
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 17 mins
Director. Kenneth Lonergan
Cast. Casey Affleck, Tate Donovan, Kyle Chandler, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams.
Rating. 76%

Review.

Writer and director, Kenneth Lonergan's third directorial feature film, Manchester By The Sea is an unrelenting portrait of grief and the weight of family ties.

Casey Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a Boston caretaker who lives a sullen and solitary existence in the southern suburb of Quincy, Massachusetts. Lee is forced to return to his hometown of Manchester-by-the-sea following the death of his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), only to find to his astonishment that he is now the legal guardian of Joe's teenage son (Lucas Hedges).

Lee has apparently not returned to his childhood home in Essex County for at least six years. For the audience, his exit is a mystery, but one of lucid tragedy, which is worn on the face of every townsperson that glimpses Lee. Lonergan intersperses the action with the flashbacks that agonisingly haunt Lee's psyche. The past would appear eternally present for Lee in Manchester-by-the-sea, but how did this once happy, outgoing individual end up an empty husk? For much of the film, the audience waits with bated breath for the personal and unspoken trauma that bubbles beneath the surface of Manchester By The Sea to be revealed.

I cannot stress enough how much Casey Affleck's portrayal of Lee Chandler is the soul of Manchester By The Sea. Yes, Kenneth Lonergan has produced a beautifully written screenplay, but Affleck produces an extraordinary performance. One that is relentless in its bleakness and with an evidently seething poisonous rage at the world and for himself. Simply mesmerising.

Manchester By The Sea is a masterful study of sorrow and grief in which the painful fragility of life is the major theme. It is a film composed in an inexpressibly sombre minor key. Beautiful and tragic at the same time, Manchester By The Sea balances the bittersweet drama perfectly.