Manchester by the Sea is about Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), a janitor who does odd jobs for a living. He is a benign albeit taciturn worker who completes his tasks accordingly. When his boss blames him for being an unfriendly person based on the one argument he has with Ms. Olsen (Missy Yager), there arrives an inaccuracy in character depiction. But, as the film progresses, it gradually begins to prove the employer's point.
What writer-director Kenneth Lonergan has done with the arc of Lee's character is that, he bridges it from both ends of the curve simultaneously. The current-day Lee is portrayed to be a broken man. He doesn't favor conversations. He picks fight with fellow drunkards at the bar. Yet, he's a patient guy. But, as the screenplay oscillates to the past, we are blown away to see Lee, who was once upon a time, the complete opposite to the previous descriptions! This stark contrast drives our interest to learn what caused this huge turnaround! We are looking at a cheerful, annoying, careless and talkative persona who accidentally caused his kids to burn in a tragic house fire! He loses his wife too through a divorce. He is a walking vacuum who has everything taken away from him. This absolute horrific ghost is the reason for the frozen remorse on his face. His past is constantly beating him, which explains why he'll never be able to stay back in Manchester. And God, Casey Affleck gave a phenomenal performance in this role!
The key to change is responsibility. How an irresponsible man of yore accepts an assigned responsibility and dutifully learns to carry it out forms the crux. There's even a crisscross sequence that compares two events, namely the aforementioned mishap and Lee signing in as the guardian to his deceased brother's son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges) to highlight the differences in actions taken by our protagonist. Speaking of Patrick, here's another terrific performance by Lucas Hedges who plays the clumsy and brusque teenager! You'll enjoy the interactions, logger-headings, conversations, curses and language these two main characters exchange with each other, which forms the feature's most engaging scenes with enough essence of dark comedy; we are often not sure whether we should be laughing at it or not! In a family where quarrels occur quite frequently, here we are witnessing a father who has lost his children and a son who has lost his father coming together via a channel called understanding. Both have conflicting interests, but the narration draws itself to the closest melting point these characters could achieve.
Let's talk about the nature of the motion picture. First of all, the quality appears to be like of a TV movie's, which could be due to the fact that it's a germinal indie production ventured by Amazon Studios. The nonlinear arrangement of events is oddly unique - the way it cuts back to earlier decades is unforeseen, but it does make you think quickly as it is effective in allowing you to piece the story together. Also, the proceedings linger on every little detail. It pauses, it takes its time and this was definitely done to scrap off the 'cinema layer' that could stick onto the end product, providing us more believability and hard-on-Earth reality. Once you get used to it, it hooks. But, it does seem unnecessary at times, and at certain instances, this is the factor that renders the show boring.
Lesley Barber's background score is too melodramatic. There are places in the editing timeline that doesn't require any music at all to be honest. However, the email voice interruption is a good edit. Patrick breaking down in panic attack after facing a freezer could be again, a real dark comical episode or something that's absolutely serious we're not supposed to laugh at. Nevertheless, an intense scene. Randi's (Michelle Williams) final conversation with Lee is utmost heartbreaking - easily the best scene in the entire picture! This could be the reason why the screenshot of this scene was used for the official posters. With that being said, there are sequences that could be removed and wouldn't have affected the script at all, with Lee arguing with a street-passer being an example.
"Does she live in a fucking sleeping bag?"