Manchester by the Sea – 5 stars

A haunting, mournful yet cautiously optimistic film.  As with You Can Count on Me, writer-director Kenneth Lonergan depicts family like no one else.  In this family, the protagonist is Casey Affleck, a Boston janitor so emotionally stunted he struggles to maintain a personal conversation longer than a minute, seeking outlet in drinking and getting his ass kicked. He is forced to return to his home town of Manchester due to tragedy, and while there, must confront his unforgiving past.

It’s hard to say enough about Affleck’s performance.  He is required to do so much with so little emotion, yet in a wince, a stare, or a wry smile, he imparts more than he ever could with pages of overt dialogue.  He is ably matched by Lucas Hedges (both are nominated), his teenage nephew, who has been placed in Affleck’s care for a period of time.  Kyle Chandler, as Affleck’s  older brother, exudes responsibility and vulnerability.  Yet, despite the lack of real familial relationships, these three actors seem as if they are indeed brothers. The scene where the adult Chandler and Affleck won’t stop goofing around during a dire time at the hospital (much to the frustration of Chandler’s wife and their gentle, peacemaking father) is foreshadowing for a later rough, jokey and conspicuous dialogue between Affleck and Hedges.

Lonergan provides no easy resolution or pat answers. He stitches the pain of the past in his characters very tightly and eschews melodrama. I kept expecting to be overwhelmed by a moment or a revelation, but really, the entire piece is quietly, almost stealthily moving, a studied portrait on loss and family and life.

I still have a few flicks to see, such as Moonlight and Hacksaw Ridge, and I was over the moon for La La Land, but as of now, this is the best film I’ve seem from 2016.

One nit.  The score, by Lesly Barber, which is orchestral with a lot of strings, and is at times affecting, is at others intrusive and overstated.  In such a restrained film, this was off-putting.