Manchester by the Sea (2016)

This review was written shortly after completing Manchester by the Sea during the spring semester of my sophomore year at college. In preparation for that year's 89th Academy Awards, I saw all 9 Best Picture nominees: Manchester by the Sea was the sixth nominee watched. My overall rating for the film was 2 stars out of a possible 4. On my scale, 2 stars qualifies as "okay/average."

Oh my God this dragged on! I truly suffered during this film. I went into this with stupid hope. I like Kyle Chandler but I have yet to see him do something truly impressive in the film world. I hate Michelle Williams, but thought I should give her another shot. I tend to feel sorry for Casey Affleck because he is the far less talented younger brother of Ben Affleck, and there was so much buzz around him in this movie that he should win Best Actor at the Oscars and follow suit with the bajillion other acting honors he’s taken this Awards Season that I had faith in him.

Chandler gave his typical movie performance, meaning its comparable to his performance in Super 8 (2011), not his better showcased acting capabilities from the TV show Early Edition (1996-2000). Williams was Williams, nothing too notable, and there are certainly better options for this role than her. And Affleck was himself: his boring, bland self. Early on in this movie, I thought that Affleck was doing well, and that the role of Lee was made for him. But long before the credits had come, I'd changed my mind and realized something critical to my perception of the film: this role is him. This role is asking Casey Affleck to be his traditional, mopey, detached, uninteresting self for 137 minutes. It is fucking unbearable.

Lucas Hedges plays Patrick, the fatherless son and nephew to Lee (or maybe I should just say Casey because I am pretty sure that they are the same person). Hedges’ performance is somehow Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actor, which confuses me as much as Michelle Williams’ nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Admittedly though, nothing confuses me more about the upcoming Oscars than the baffling decision to nominate Viola Davis in Fences for the same award as Williams, when Davis deserves to be nominated for Best Actress. I haven't written a review of Fences (2016), so I need a way to voice my displeasure with Davis' misplaced nomination in the wrong category. My apologies for this tangent.

Now, let's return to the bleak mess that is Manchester by the Sea. The screenplay is schlocky, soap opera-esque, and if I had to choose between listening to it again or losing my hearing, I would choose the latter. And do not get me started on Kenneth Lonergan's direction. It’s bad. It’s so, so bad. There are so many unnecessary shots, a lot of unnecessary scenes, and the movie is unnecessarily long. The film editing was bad and the score was grating on the ears.

If you'd like a bright spot in the middle of this review: the cinematography was actually pretty enjoyable!

Patrick’s band is absolutely atrocious, but if I were given the choice, I would rather pay $100 to watch them perform in their garage/basement (wherever the hell they were) and listen to them be “musical” and quarrel for a two-hour extended encore set, than, for a second time, watch this film for free. That should sum up how I feel about Manchester by the Sea.

Lastly, what the hell was the story that the characters were debating was true or not? And why were they saying “the Lee Chandler?” Does it have something to do with how his children died? Is the story that he purposely killed his kids? Is it something to do with his reputation from something before that incident or after? Is it something related to his drinking problem? I know this is not directly talked about, but I think it’s pretty clear that he has a drinking problem. Why did the lady at the dock office say that she didn’t want him to be there ever again? Does she think he purposely set the fire? Does she hate that he gets into bar fights? Does she just like Joe (Kyle Chandler) better? Does she have another reason for hating him? It just bugs me that this isn't addressed… at all. Going off of the drinking problem declaration I made, it seems to me that him drinking is pretty counterintuitive and counter-human. The reason his house burned down, his kids died, and his marriage collapsed all stem from him being too drunk to act responsibly and put a screen over the fireplace one night. I know drinking is believed by some to take away internal pain, but if the pain is caused by an event directly influenced by drinking, should that not repel the responsible individual from ever drinking again? It just seems like the wrong and improbable, maybe even impossible, choice for someone in Lee’s position with his history.

But at the same time, I honestly don't care about the answers to any of this. The only answer I really want: what the hell do all the other critics see in Manchester by the Sea? Because this critic is baffled by the overwhelming acclaim and lauding.