Yash Reviews 'Manchester by the Sea'

MOVIE

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Dir: Kenneth Lonergan

This was so touching, poignant and utterly fascinating. I wasn't just watching it, I felt totally into it. These can be easily the best performances of this year to say at least; Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler delivers humongous acts.

The structure of the story was framed marvellously. The film opens up with Lee Chandler (Casey) - a janitor - who looks so sad and broken from the inside and is so reluctant and grumpy from the outside, he doesn't give a proper heed to anyone and easily pick up fights; that easily reminds one of Holden Caulfield of 'The Cather in the Rye' - we initially don't like or understand him much until we find out what he's been subjected to in his past similar to Holden's melancholic tale.

So the story is non-linear, Lee is working in Boston and is informed about his big brother (Kyle Chandler) Joe's death - who lived in Manchester with his son Patrick (Lucas Hedges) and was separated from his wife as she's highly irresponsible - Gretchen Mol; He wrote in his will that Lee has to be the guardian of Pat till he turns 21, now Lee hated Manchester as there's been a tragedy on him in his past - which is also to cause of Michelle Williams leaving him. Thus, Lee and Pat are in-a-way forced to live together and now we see it's also a coming-of-age tale of Patrick as well.

Although, it's a tale of aftermaths of family tragedy - where Lee and Patrick learns to live with each other; Surprisingly, we discovers the elements of what is called 'Brittle Humour' in an overtly sad theme perfectly embedded like honeyed spicy chilly potatoes.

At last, we see transformations in characters, they are getting adjusted with situations and are wise enough to leave the depression behind and carry on with their lives. There are many emotional tear-jerker scenes. It was around 2h 15min long, but I could watch this for 5 hours - I don't think anything was extraneously elaborated.

Casey and Lucas definitely deserves the Oscars; I didn't know Casey has such skills from his previous roles but he's now unquestionably in the race of the giants.

This can be my favourite film of 2016 but I still haven't seen 'La La Land'.