By Christine Westwood
Kenneth Lonergan’s new independent movie, Manchester By The Sea, picked up early buzz as one of the favourites at The Sundance Film Festival. Lonergan’s 2000 debut, You Can Count On Me, won a screenwriting prize at the fest, and set the standard for his sensitive stories of human tragedy. Manchester By The Sea is emotionally complex and compassionately observed, a beautifully modulated tale encompassing humour and pain, a story of broken people trying to repair themselves.
At an after-screening Q&A at The Sundance Film Festival, Lonergan talked about the challenges and themes behind Manchester By The Sea. “In my life, I had something very tragic happen, and I remember how hard it hit my family,” Lonergan explains. “In all the scenes, I try to work out what is happening between the characters, and that leads to listening, to silences. It’s about the undercurrent between the characters, and not just the words that they are using.”
Casey Affleck is a revelation in the role of Lee Chandler, who is made a legal guardian of his dead brother’s son, and returns to his hometown to care for the teenage boy, against a background of personal tragedy of his own. The power of Affleck’s performance owes as much for what he holds back as what he reveals. Withdrawn, held in, absorbing it all, he is an explosion waiting to happen, and an early scene of him picking a fight in a bar is when we know that he’s in real emotional trouble. Michelle Williams matches Affleck as Lee’s wife, Randi, in their nuanced scenes together. This is an absolute case study in how people suffer trauma, and how it changes and overwhelms them. Affleck’s character has suffered an unspeakable loss that he blames himself for. It is just one family’s drama, but Lonergan gives it the dignity and scale of a Greek tragedy.
There is a terrific sense of place as Lonergan saturates the screen with fine details, boasting a cool palette and an almost documentary sense of his location: Manchester By The Sea, a town on Cape Ann in Massachusetts. There is a rule in storytelling that says to put the viewer in a very specific world, and this certainly employs that rule. “For the location, I’m from New York, but my stepfather is from the Boston area, but I didn’t know it well,” Lonergan said at Sundance of his use of locations. “I made it up in the writing, and then we all learned about it when we went up there for filming. It helped to be specific. There were real houses, and real marinas. It’s a tribute to the actors that they inhabit it. If you’re not specific, then it doesn’t come to life.”
And in Casey Affleck, it all comes to life in shocking and moving ways. “Casey is persistent and specific and relentless,” Lonergan enthuses of his leading man. “He wants to try everything. He’s also very good natured. His very thoughtful performance made me cry. Actors are the only ones who have to be real and alive every minute of the scene. It’s like a miracle to me. You’re always so grateful when you get such a great cast.”
Affleck, meanwhile, was equally enamoured of his director. “The first time that I knew about Kenneth Lonergan was with his movie, You Can Count On Me,” says Affleck. “The writing was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was so true to life, and it sounded like me…it was so specific to something that I knew. The characters were recognisable, complete people in a very real place with real things happening all the time. When I read Manchester By The Sea, I thought that the role and script were so well written. I just turned up and did what I had to do. It’s an epic tragedy. It’s too big to take on all at once, so I took one moment and one scene at a time.”
Manchester By The Sea opens in cinemas on February 2. Read our review.
