"Manchester by the Sea" Review

Manchester by the Sea is a drama film directed and written by Kenneth Lonergan and starring Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, and Matthew Broderick for a hot second. Affleck plays Lee, a cagey, sardonic drunk handyman in Boston who has been hardened by a devastating past. Lee's life starts to suck even more when his brother Joe dies, and Joe's son Patrick (Hedges) is unexpectedly left in his care, and so begins two and a half hours of being incredibly upset.

I'm going to disappoint a ton of people with this review. Manchester by the Sea has gotten unanimously amazing reviews ever since it premiered at Sundance almost a year ago. And it's not like with something like Finding Dory when its crazily high Rotten Tomatoes score is the product of just across-the-board mild approval; this has been called the greatest film of the year by numerous critics, and recently, the National Board of Review. And I gotta say, I'm not much of a fan. That's not a sentiment I'm proud to have either - I really wanted to love this movie, and I don't even think it's not good. But there was something missing.

To stop myself from talking myself into a hole, I want to stress that there is a lot to like about this film, chief among them being the performances. If you've paid attention the reception of this movie you've probably heard that Casey Affleck gives a performance that is one of the best American cinema has had to offer in years, and it's a very earned point of praise. Affleck's character is somehow eminently likable despite being a total asshole. He's tasked to walk a very tricky tightrope trying to keep the audience mostly on his side throughout the story, and he does so with aplomb. The rest of the cast is suitably great as well - Lucas Hedges is incredibly convincing and charming as Patrick, and Michelle Williams (who I believe is being over-hyped in trailers and on posters even though she legitimately only has about 8 minutes of screen time) sort of steals the entire third act with a very emotional scene where she really shows off her talents.

It's not all just weeping and yelling either, though there is a lot of it, like any Oscar-hopeful family drama. These actors, and in a lot of ways Lonergan's screenplay, nail the subtleties of their characters and situations, and a lot of the film is actually quite funny, in a very dark way. Having tangential knowledge of Lonergan's past work in film and theater, I'm aware that his M.O. is sort of "kitchen sink realism", and it shows in Manchester. Many scenes in this film are very memorable either for their intense emotion (though I notably never found myself tearing up at any point, surprisingly) or their surprising wit, especially scenes revolving around Patrick, and most of them feel like real life, a sentiment echoed about this film by many a critic.

However, I think it's almost to the film's detriment. Don't get me wrong; I am usually a huge fan of pessimistic, depressing, darkly funny, grounded, slow-burning films where nothing happens and the lesson is that life sucks and problems are never completely solved, and this film fully embodies all of those qualities. Yet for some reason, there was just something not clicking for me with this film. I can tell you about almost a dozen scenes from this film that I genuinely loved, and everything from its message to its fairly pitch-perfect visual presentation of a New England coastal town is definitely up my alley. As a whole, though, I felt the film was underwhelming. I didn't feel like I'd witnessed an entire fine-tuned single work made up of connected parts, but rather a series of disjointed upsetting slices of life that were all interesting in their own right. I'm not too sure how to articulate it beyond that.

I also have just never found Lonergan to be an intriguing art-maker. While this movie has some incredible realism, it does at times feel like a working class people story as told by a rich New York playwright. The characters are fleshed out and well-acted, but they still feel like archetypes. And especially with the film's overbearing and unnecessary orchestral score during the most emotional scenes (I personally feel many of the scenes would've worked better with silence) and the cloying nature of most of its marketing, I had this feeling that most of the film's biggest emotions weren't completely genuine. I can't quite put my finger on why, but I never saw past the veneer of it being an Oscar-hopeful drama about sad people written by a very confident and thoughtful Artiste who really wanted me to cry. It doesn't all feel manipulative, but it did at times.

And while, as I said, I love a good nihilist story where a lot of loose ends are never tied up in the name of dispelling some hard truths about the unforgiving nature of the universe upon mankind, this film left me feeling sort of lost and unsatisfied. When the film faded to black and the credits rolled, I was really taken aback and felt like the meaning of everything I'd watched just was never made clear. I don't need subtext spoonfed to me, but I didn't even really see the bowl in this situation. Notably, that is exactly how our main characters feel at the end of the film, so perhaps this disappointment with everything not making sense is how I'm supposed to feel. Maybe this movie really is brilliant and I'm just stupid. I'm open to and okay with this possibility.

Overall, while I don't think I'll watch it again for a long time, I recommend Manchester by the Sea. If you think you're gonna love it, you probably will. I'm definitely the odd one out here. It's by no means poorly done - it has a number of amazing performances and a script filled with delightful touches that unfortunately didn't add up to much for me. If you parse your expectations like I didn't, you'll probably really enjoy it. I'm sure I'm gonna get a lot of flak for giving Manchester by the Sea a lower rating than I gave Sausage Party (although upon thinking about it more I've retroactively reduced my rating of that film to a B-), but hey, it's how I feel.

Grade: B

(Stay tuned very soon for my first Oscar predictions)