I’ve held off on reviewing this film for three weeks, hoping to come to a better understanding of it.  Today it received six Academy Award nominations.  I still don’t like it.  Let’s discuss.

Kenneth Lonergan’s film is very personal, following a rather miserable guy (Casey Affleck) around New England as he returns to his home town because his brother has died.  He learns that he has been slated to care for his brother’s teenage son until he comes of age.  This makes pretty much everybody miserable, and we gradually learn why.  Eventually these people learn to connect with each other and life becomes a little easier.  That’s pretty much it, except that the drama is permeated with grief and doom.

Lonergan’s handling of familial angst is totally convincing and authentic.  Characters act like real people, in rotten situations, unable to stop hurting themselves or each other.  Then we learn why Lee Chandler (Affleck) is so miserable and his life choices make sudden sense.  The film’s real power is how it honestly portrays Lee’s personal misery — which he will never escape — and how that shapes everything and everyone with which he comes in contact.  The fact that he can go on living every day is the story’s tribute to humanity.

So while I concede that the film is very well made and very well acted — with Oscar nominations for Affleck, Lee’s ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and his brother’s boy Patrick (Lucas Hedges), I still disliked the experience of watching it.  It’s one of those stories (which seem to proliferate on television now) where people refuse to talk to each other about important stuff, and suffer immensely because of it.  Ironically, I think, this reminds me of A Man Called Ove, the recent Swedish film now up for two Oscars of its own, which I loved and gave four stars.  It’s the same type of story, and yet the Swedish film has charm and vitality and life, while this one was, for me at least, an unrelenting downer.

If Shakespeare were alive today I think he would approve of Manchester by the Sea‘s tragic dimensions.  He wouldn’t have written it; the story isn’t grandiloquent enough for his quill, yet he would appreciate it.  I mean that as a compliment to the film.  Viewers who want serious cinema should find ample reward for their attention.  But once was enough for me.  I didn’t find the story satisfying in any meaningful way; I thought Lee’s story should have ended about halfway through, in the police station scene.  That sequence was the only time I was riveted, and the only time I truly identified with his character.  So I respect this film, but I don’t like it very much.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  24 January 2017.