Movie Review: "Manchester By The Sea"

"Manchester By The Sea": B.  When our three children were little, Momma Cuandito and I used to board separate flights to the same destination in order to lessen the odds of leaving them orphans.  When the kids reached grade school we finally executed wills, something we should have done years before.  One of the most important decisions young parents make when creating a will is naming a lucky (?) person to be their children's guardian if catastrophe should strike.  My sister lived in New Jersey and Mary's brother already had five kids.  The logical choice was Mary's single sister, The Great Aunt Margaret.  But we did not spring a surprise on Margaret by naming her as guardian without first discussing the plan with her.  Our strategy was first to ply her with wine at Champp's Bar in Richfield before popping the question.  The strategy worked; she happily -- ironically after shedding a tear -- said "yes."  Fortunately we ended up not having to put her parenting skills to the test.  Now all three of our kids are in their thirties, and Mary and I are still around to bear witness.

In Manchester By The Sea, Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is not so lucky.  His older brother, Joe Chandler (Kyle Chandler, who I assume is no relation as this is a work of fiction), has died suddenly although not totally unexpectedly due to a heart condition, and Lee does not learn he is the named guardian of Joe's sixteen year old nephew until Joe is chilling in the hospital morgue.  This manifestation raises a host of problems while setting up a rather unique dynamic.
 

A major issue is logistics.  The nephew, Patrick (Lucas Hedges), lives in Manchester by-the-Sea on the northeast Massachusetts coast, while Lee lives in distant Quincy, a gritty Boston suburb.  But even more problematic is the tainted history Lee has left behind in Manchester.  There is a reason he has moved away from the town where he grew up.  Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan keeps the viewers in the dark, teasing us with hints of Lee's ignominious past.  For example, there are two or more early scenes in Manchester when people with hushed voices say, "So that's the Lee Chandler," as if he were an infamous celebrity.  We also know from copious flashbacks that at one time both Lee and Joe were married but are now divorced.  Their ex-wives are Randi (Michelle Williams) and Elise (Gretchen Mol), respectively.  Placing Patrick with his unstable mother, Elise, is out of the question.  Arguably she is even more ill-equipped to raise a teenager than is Uncle Lee.
 

The dynamic between Lee and Patrick is not of the type often explored in the movies.  Their nexus might be described as "adult vis-a-vis almost adult."  Patrick is not some helpless little child nor is Lee a single parent who will simply add one more kid to his brood.  Their uncle-nephew relationship has always been solid, a fact driven home by flashback scenes of the two of them fishing together on Joe's boat when Patrick was about ten years old.  Now he is a junior in high school, a hockey player and a rock band member with two girlfriends, neither of whom knows about the other.  At sixteen he is legally, if not developmentally, too young to live without supervision, yet he talks and usually acts like an adult.  Most of the time, Lee and Patrick's dialogue resembles exchanges between equals.  Even without his own personal challenges, such as anger management, Lee will be severely burdened if he fulfills his dead brother's wishes.
 

I found the writing and the editing of this film to be inconsistent.  A good example of the latter is a four minute scene in the third act which is comprised of Lee picking a fight with a fellow bar patron who brushes past him.  A wild melee ensues.  Much earlier in the story, a virtually identical barroom brawl is portrayed.  The second time around should have not bypassed the editor's scissors.
 

As for the script writing, I submit for your consideration an excerpt from a review I wrote to my kids on November 29, 2011 concerning Like Crazy, a movie about a college couple, Jacob and Anna, who fall in love:

There is an important scene about three-fourths of the way through the movie where Anna has a crucial face-to-face dialogue with a character named Simon.  But guess what?  We only see them talking; no audible dialogue!  In my humble view, that is lazy script writing, and is the largest negative for me.  It reminded me of a courtroom drama I saw called "Anatomy Of A Murder."  That movie shows testimony from many witnesses, but we never get to see or hear star defense counsel Jimmy Stewart give his closing argument (even though one of the characters states that it was the best closing argument he'd ever heard).  My point is this:  If one of the main characters in a movie has something in the way of a "game changer" to say, I want to hear it.

Now, why do I bring that up here?  Because Manchester's script is guilty of the same offense.  (I might call it the Anatomy Of A Murder Syndrome.)  The most heart-rending moment in the story is a late scene dialogue between Lee and his ex, Randi, in which the crying Randi apologizes for "the awful things I said to you."  Yet the very words Randi is apologizing for are never heard by us!  In a movie with a running time of two and a quarter hours, surely that earlier conversation should have been included for the viewer's benefit.
 

The first half of the story could have used a chuckle or two, but they're all saved for later.  The movie almost turns into a comedy past its half-way point.  When Lee drops Patrick off at his girlfriend Silvie's (Kara Hayward) house for a purported study date, Patrick encourages his uncle to accept the dinner invitation of Silvie's mother, Jill (Heather Burns), so that Lee can keep Jill occupied, thus enabling Patrick and Silvie to make out alone without the mother's intrusions.  In a different scene, when Lee insists that he has to live in Quincy instead of Manchester so he can keep his maintenance engineer job, Patrick replies, "Why?  You're a janitor!  There are plenty of clogged drains and stuffed toilets in Manchester that need clearing."  The first hour of the story needed such infusions of humor for a better pace.

The beautiful cinematography by Jody Lee Lipes  is not enough to raise this hyped movie above a B.  Lee Chandler is too deadpan to watch over the course of two-plus hours.  In the first few minutes of the film, a beautiful brunette intentionally spills a drink on him in a bar in a vain attempt to start a conversation.  Lee does not pick up the aggressive hint.  Much later, Jill becomes exasperated when Lee proves incapable of carrying on a simple conversation.  The needle never lifts off the zero line much when gauging Lee's personality.   A more interesting character than Lee is Randi.  Yet, despite the misleading promotions and posters announcing Michelle Williams as a co-star -- The Guardian's review even suggests her performance might be Oscar-worthy --  Williams is on the screen less than ten minutes.  Maybe a sequel with Randi as the protagonist will be in the offing.  Meanwhile, Manchester might legitimately be called a love story, but the focus is not the relationship between husband and wife; rather, it's the one between uncle and nephew.