Manchester by the Sea is simply magnificent

Casey Affleck

In Manchester by the Sea, Casey Affleck plays a man called Lee Chandler, although he is usually referred to – and normally behind his back – as ‘the Lee Chandler’. He is, it has to be said, a man with deep and serious issues.

We meet him first in the deadest of dead end jobs as a janitor in a low-rent housing complex. He can barely be civil to his tenants and eventually the anger erupts. Lee is a powder keg of rage with the shortest of fuses. However when his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies suddenly Lee is called back to the family home in the titular town. Joe’s death was not unexpected so he has made some provision, chief among them being that Lee should look after his teenage son Patrick (Lance Hedges).

It may be that Joe was well aware of Lee’s issues and left him in charge of Patrick in the hope of enabling him to deal with them. But everyone, Lee included, knows that makes no sense, and the film rather revels in that. One of the surprises of the film up to this point is how light it has been given the subject matter. Lonergan is a gifted comic writer – he wrote Analyse This (1999) – and the lightness of touch amid the scenes of grief make the whole experience more credible.

However in the moment where Lee sits down to decide whether he is going to accept his brother’s wishes, the film takes a turn. We discover just why he is known as ‘the Lee Chander’ in a sequence of devastating emotional power; a scene so raw and painful it’s like sandpaper being rubbed on a nerve.

Suddenly Affleck’s characterisation makes sense; everything clicks into place in a performance of superb self-control and restraint. Lee doesn’t just have anger issues; he is in the deepest circle of his own private hell, the one reserved for those who have committed the most unforgivable sins. Ironically there are those who are prepared to forgive him but he is not among them.

It is to Lonergan’s credit that he is able to handle this big reveal without derailing the film. Lee and Patrick find themselves in the worst places of their life and the scary thing is that they are each other’s best chance of redemption. Bravely Lonergan focuses on the humour, albeit humour of the darkest shade of black, to keep the film going. The ongoing debate about where Joe should be buried, for example, is just an elongated double act.

Lonergan’s screenplay is tone-perfect and the performances throughout are faultless. Casey Affleck is simply magnificent; you don’t feel sorry for Lee for his faults, you are just astonished that he manages to bear the burden of his anguish on a daily basis. Affleck never once begs for the audience’s sympathy, he doesn’t allow himself a single unearned emotion in this film. It is, for me, one of the great performances of 21^st century American cinema.

He is not alone. Lance Hedges is excellent as young Patrick, while Kyle Chandler and Michelle Williams are remarkably effective with limited screen time.

I confess that I have always been fonder of Kenneth Lonergan as a writer than a director. I like his screenplays for Analyse This and Gangs of New York (2002), however his two previous films as writer-director, You Can Count on Me (2000) and Margaret (2011) left me rather cold.

Death or the prospect of it rather haunted those two films but with Manchester by the Sea, the grim reaper comes front and centre as Lonergan embraces mortality and its consequences. But he does so with humanity and optimism to create a film about grief and grieving which, especially in the last two scenes, finds a haunting beauty in our ability to survive and move on.