Manchester by the Sea
Written & Directed by: Kenneth Lonergan
Academy Award for Best Actor for Casey Affleck and for Best Original Screenplay.
This film has a meditative atmosphere to it, the static landscapes and even a simple shot of a building looks like a painting. The performance of Casey Affleck is also in a way that he reacts and adapts to situations around more than he being active. This film deals with loss of a person and the aftermaths of it. After his brother's death, Lee Chandler is named guardian to his 16 year old nephew Patrick which forces him to return to his hometown and confront his past. The editing in this film is so refreshing, the cuts to flashback are jarring and that is the feeling they want the audience to have as well because clearly the rest of the film goes on in a smooth way in terms of the cuts.
I felt that I didn't get everything that they presented in the story, maybe I didn't pay enough attention or maybe the storytelling wasn't global and they probably didn't even attempt to do that. But I liked the dynamics between Lee and Patrick as to how they start off with a lot of differences and eventually how they gel together. There's this brilliant scene between Lee and Randi where Randi is crying and feeling bad for Lee whereas Lee feels weird in the situation and it feels like he doesn't want to face that situation. Both the performances were so good in that scene. This scene stood out to me, while watching it and I felt had there been a few more scenes like this in the film with such conflicts I would've found the film more interesting.
The film mimicks life like shows, unlike movies. It's not only about the pace of the film, it's also about the conflicts that they present and the way they present them. I'm not saying that this is a slice of life film like a Richard Linklater's film, there we don't see much of conflicts at all. Here, we see conflicts but the way they're dealt is so subtle and even that sometimes feels like that is larger than life because in real life such conflicts would break someone and not let them be that composed as Lee was.
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