Manchester by the Sea (2016). Courtesy Amazon Studios / Roadside Attractions. Image via National Board of Review.
There are calls to make after Joe Chandler dies, arrangements to discuss and a teenager who still has school, friends and band practice. Manchester by the Sea puts those demands in front of Lee before he has found a way to speak about his brother. Death has created a list of things to do. Completing it will not settle what has happened.
Casey Affleck's Lee works as a handyman in the Boston area when the news brings him back to his Massachusetts hometown. Joe has named him guardian of his son Patrick, played by Lucas Hedges. The responsibility looks straightforward on paper. For Lee, it means returning to streets, people and memories he has organised his life around avoiding.
At a National Board of Review discussion in December 2016, Kenneth Lonergan explained Joe's reasoning: Lee can still be relied upon to show up, even though he has shut himself away. Joe also hopes that caring for Patrick will keep his brother connected to other people. That hope gives the arrangement its affection and its risk. Being dependable does not mean Lee can simply become the person everyone needs.
Patrick makes that distinction hard to ignore. He has a whole teenage life in the town, with loyalties and irritations that do not pause for his father's death. Hedges can be impatient with Lee and frightened of losing him within the same conversation. Their practical disagreements keep the film from reducing either character to a quiet, permanently solemn expression of grief.
The past interrupts these ordinary exchanges without much warning. In the same discussion, Lonergan credited editor Jennifer Lame with favouring sudden transitions into the flashbacks. He described the memories as active experiences Lee is carrying through the present. A familiar place can therefore hold two moments at once: the errand Lee is trying to finish and the life he cannot bear to revisit.
Affleck's contained performance makes those interruptions felt even when Lee says very little. A conversation can stall because the words available to the other person are not words he can answer. Lonergan leaves room for awkwardness, jokes and small acts of care around that silence. The family continues making arrangements and finding ways to see each other. Lee's pain does not disappear when he manages to take part.
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