Sundance Report: Casey Affleck Smolders and Shines in the Masterful 'Manchester by the Sea'

After the messy, half decade-long battle over the final cut of his previous film, 2011’s Margaret, it’s a relief to declare that Manchester by the Sea is pure Kenneth Lonergan.

Lonergan, a playwright and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, has directed just three movies in the last 16 years, including this new one. (His first as a director, You Can Count on Me, debuted to great fanfare at Sundance back in 2000. He also wrote the screenplay for Gangs of New York). But despite his modest output as a director, there are few filmmakers who can claim to have such distinctive styles or recognizable storytelling devices. Many of Lonergan’s trademarks are on display in Manchester, a nuanced and gorgeously downbeat family dramedy that made its debut (and earned several standing ovations) at Sundance on Saturday.

Both of Lonergan’s previous films began with a sudden death, and Manchester follows in that tradition. The flashback-heavy film stars Casey Affleck as Lee, a Boston handyman who is numb with grief (and occasional rage) over a personal tragedy that took place several years before. His life is mundane and repetitive; he unclogs toilets, takes abuse from tenants, and drinks alone. His despair is compounded and his simple life complicated when his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies of heart disease, and Lee is assigned guardianship of Joe’s 16-year-old son Patrick (Lucas Hedges). In You Can Count on Me and Margaret, the sacrificial characters were hit by a truck and bus, respectively, so at least Chandler gets off easy.

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Chandler is also lucky in that, unlike the characters killed in Lonergan’s previous two films, he gets to stick around through most of the film thanks to long, detailed flashbacks. After mostly playing police officers and jerks on the big screen over the last few years, it’s nice to see Chandler return to the sort of quiet, caring father figure that he played in Friday Night Lights.

Without giving away too much, it’s safe to say that Lee is struggling with a mighty burden, not unlike the one Anna Paquin carries in Margaret. These are characters that are fundamentally changed — and driven to extremes — by the tragedies that they inadvertently caused. Affleck fills Lee with quiet desperation and legitimate self-loathing, turning in a performance so real that during the post-screening Q&A, a concerned audience member asked the actor what kind of long-term effect the role had on his psyche.

The dynamic between Lee and Patrick is a highlight of Manchester, and is where Lonergan mines much of the film’s laughs. Patrick, trying his best to distract himself from his father’s death, focuses on hockey, his rock band, and his attempts to get laid (he’s got two girlfriends). He has a dry wit and isn’t afraid to deliver a droll jab at his often monosyllabic uncle. His sexual misadventures and conversations with his friends and girlfriends — including arguments about Star Trek and dollhouses — also provide strong comic relief (and, in some cases, catharsis).

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Lonergan has always done a great job at creating complex and vivid young people (he wrote the seminal stage show This Is Our Youth, about teenagers on the Upper West Side of Manhattan). Rory Culkin was a delight as a very intelligent eight-year-old in You Can Count on Me, and young Anna Paquin was the entire center of gravity as the main character in Margaret. Manchester’s Patrick, for all his classical teenage pursuits, is no dummy; while Lee is technically his guardian, Patrick is often the one delivering tough love and reassurance to his mourning uncle. His strength and coolness serve to make the occasional breakdown — one over the fact that his father has to be kept frozen at the morgue for months — even more dramatic and affecting.

It should be clear that Manchester is very much its own film; its use of Lonergan’s favorite devices and motifs wouldn’t matter much if it didn’t have an original story to tell. Unlike Margaret, it focuses on a working class family that has none of the creature comforts found in the Upper West Side (where, in fact, many of Lonergan’s movies and plays take place). And its use of flashback is also novel, as many memories go on for long stretches in order to give more context to Lee’s present-day suffering and paint a portrait of a much different man pre-tragedy (Michelle Williams, as his ex-wife, shines in these scenes).

While it would be a bummer if it took Lonergan another decade to make a movie, it may just take that long to fully plumb the depths of Manchester by the Sea.