Manchester By The Sea

Grief is a tough and tricky opponent, and it doesn't fight fair. It can hit you hard and fast, knocking the wind out of you. It can sucker-punch you at the most unexpected moment. It can simply hammer away at you, relentlessly, until you're left numb. Manchester by the Sea recognises that grief plays dirty, and writer-director Kenneth Lonergan has crafted a poignant, piercing and remarkable film about what it takes to move beyond it, if one ever can.

Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) lives a quiet, almost monastic life in Boston, working as a handyman in a small apartment block. It's clear that he's purposely avoiding any inkling of pleasure, preferring either isolation or confrontation - he won't talk to a woman who flirts with him at a bar but he will pick a fight with a man who looked at him the wrong way. But life comes searching for Lee when he gets news that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), still living in the small town of Manchester, has suffered a fatal heart attack.

Even though he must, Lee is reluctant to return to Manchester. And he's shocked to learn that Joe has named him the legal guardian of his teenage nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Patrick is equally reluctant to leave Manchester - he has all the trappings of a teenager's life, including "two girlfriends" and a terrible band, and he doesn't want to leave them behind to move hours away to Boston. So, Lee grudgingly agrees to remain in Manchester, although it becomes more and more clear that something truly terrible forced him out and kept him out for so long.

It's not until around halfway Manchester by the Sea that it's revealed just what that is, and it's depicted by Lonergan and portrayed by the actors with such raw authenticity that everything that has happened up until that moment makes a bleak, sorrowful kind of sense. And it also sets the tone for everything that happens next.

One might expect Manchester by the Sea to follow a set path towards a satisfying resolution, and the way Lonergan has strongly, sensitively written and positioned these characters, one hopes that's where the movie will go. It doesn't. Not quite. That's not to say the story disappoints. But it recognises that the grief and pain felt by Lee, Patrick and everyone else touched - even tangentially - by tragedy isn't easily quelled. Indeed, there's a simple admission of defeat by Lee late in the film that is simply crushing. It's not a melodramatic moment; it's painful and it's truthful.

Despite all this, Manchester by the Sea is not a downer. Well, not completely. It's not a laugh a minute, sure, but it has so many moments of tenderness, insight and even sly humour. And its performances are so uniformly strong, so seemingly lived-in and genuine, that they give the film a life, a pulse, a soul.

Hedges is so great, showing glimmers of the man Patrick will become while portraying the immaturity of the boy he still is. And Affleck doesn't make a single false move. Every word, every action - whether he's driven by the deepest pain or rendered inarticulate by shame - is bruising and beautifully honest.