Manchester By The Sea & The Importance Of Plot

Casey Affleck is like, super depressed. Look at that face. That's a depressed face. Get ready for almost two and half hours of it because that's basically all this movie is.

Ok, maybe that's not fair. This movie has a lot going for it, which is ultimately what made it so disappointing to me. I know that this movie has gotten a shit ton of positive reviews but I don't give a shit. It's deeply flawed and ultimately a tiresome affair that I struggled to sit through.

There are a few things that any movie needs to be successful. Good writing, good characters, good cinematography, good score, good editing, good sound design, and good editing. Did I leave something out? Oh, yeah that's right. How about a fucking plot? I know that's a lot to ask, or at least this generation of filmmakers seems to make it appear as though it's a lot to ask, but a plot is more than just a series of events that are only thinly related by a central occurrence, which in this case is the death of the main character, Lee Chandler's, brother Joe, and the revelation that Joe has named Lee the guardian of his son, Patrick.

So first off, I'll say what this movie has going for it. Number one is the acting. You've been hearing that Casey Affleck was wonderful, but I think his acting is merely sufficient. There are not levels to his performance; it's a bit one note. As I said, he looks pretty much the same, vaguely depressed and world-weary, for the entirety of the run time. The real stars of the show are Michelle Williams, who plays Lee's ex-wife Randi, and Lucas Hedges, both of whom's performances outshone Affleck's, despite their characters being underutilized.

Lucas Hedges has some serious acting ability, displaying a complex character: a strong young man, grieving for his father, unsure about his relationships with his estranged mother and taciturn uncle, at once obsessed with sex but also sensitive and kind with his girlfriend(s). He feels like a real person, imperfect but wonderfully so. Michelle Williams' Randi is not quite as dynamic, but she gets only a fraction of the screen-time that Hedges has, so this can be forgiven, at least a bit. Her character is mostly defined by her motherhood, which is a bit of a trope, but I found her performance to be so devastating and human that I couldn't care less if the character was not as well-rounded as Hedges'. She is wounded and heartbroken by loss, regretful for her treatment of her ex-husband, and also hopeful for the future and blossoming in a new relationship. This character comes across perfectly in the indisputably best scene in the movie, which is the one pictured in many of the film's promotional posters:

I actually have a problem with this being the poster for the film, as it makes you expect that this relationship is at the heart of the story, and it isn't. It isn't really even about the relationship between Lee and Patrick. It's really just about the relationship with Lee to his past and with himself. Just look at the body language in that picture though. Even in a still you can tell which actor's performance is more compelling. Afflecks hands are shoved in his pockets, eyes down confused look on his face - he could be pondering whether or not to buy 2% or 1% milk, much less confronting his ex-wife about their tumultuous and painful past. Williams' pose is much more specific. She comes across, just in this picture, as pleading, afraid, sad and defensive. Her slightly shrugged shoulders suggest her apprehensiveness about opening up, while her craned neck and uplifted chin suggest a longing to connect, though her squinted eyes also show disappointment or sadness and her hand over her stomach proposes a femininity and defensiveness that well describes the heart of the character.

And I know, maybe Affleck's character is just emotionally shut-up, unable to express himself, etc. But that doesn't exactly make an exciting movie, does it? It would be fine if he eventually opened up and was willing to change but all we really get from him is that he's moody, he experiences something emotionally challenging, and as a result, he goes to a bar and gets into a fight with a random person or group of people. Have you heard this before? For me, the character is similar to Matt Damon's in Good Will Hunting, aside from the fact that the titular character is a bona fide genius and Lee Chandler is an AVERAGE JOE. I make it that obvious because the movie does too.

If a character never evolves then what the fuck was the point of sitting through a movie? You might as well have just shown me a picture and said "This is Manchester By The Sea, this character is sad and that's all that happens."

This refers to something I have talked about in a few writing classes and workshops in the past few years and I can't remember the exact name for what this is called but it's basically the question "If you are writing about something boring, is it okay for it to be boring?" The answer is no, and no it's not a matter of opinion either. Just because you are writing about a boring subject does not give the writing itself an excuse to be boring. The true artist will find a way to express the beauty in the mundane; a perfect example of this is the novel Stoner by John Williams, and no it's not about weed. It's about a guy who grows up on a farm a long time ago and his parents save money to send him to college to learn about agriculture. When he's there, he falls in love with Literature and becomes a professor. He gets into a horrible marriage, has a kid that his wife wants him to have no relationship with, and has an affair with the love of his life, a former student, for a few years before the college he teaches at finds out and they are forced to separate. Does that sound boring? Yes, but it's fucking not. It's a brilliantly written book and it's filled with beautiful observations about humans and the agelessness of love and self-discovery and disappointment. The subject of the novel is boring, but the way it's written is not. Someone should've told this to the guy who wrote Manchester By the Sea.

What I mean is this: it's okay to have a movie about a character that doesn't evolve. It's not okay to have a movie where all the characters are the same as they were at the beginning. Even if it's the main character, it's okay to have one, or maybe even two characters that don't evolve, so long as they impact other characters that you care about. People may not always change in real life, but that's not why we watch movies or read books or whatever.

Fiction is meant to idealize real life. It's not meant to tell us what we are, it's meant to remind us what we want to be. The guy doesn't have to get the girl at the end of the story but we want him to at least try, to at least learn something on his journey, right? Otherwise what's the point? We live the life of not asking the cute guy or girl out - we don't need our fiction to tell us about it.

Another problem I have with this movie is it's extensive use of flashbacks. Can anyone tell me who the fuck thought flashbacks were so goddamn effective in the first place? It disorients the viewer and doles out information inconsistently and fails to make us feel as though we are going on a journey with the protagonist. It puts us at a distance from them, and that distance is cold.

I'm going to talk about the events of the film now so stop reading if you care.

Basically Lee is a despondent janitor for an apartment building. He gets into an argument with a tenant, gets a slap on the wrist, goes to a bar, rejects a woman's advances, and gets in a fight. We get the feeling he does this often. The next day he gets a call that his brother Joe had a heart attack and he tries to make it to the hospital but learns when he arrives that Joe has died. Lee reacts stoically, which seems unlikely for a man who gets in weekly drunken fistfights, but whatever. He goes to tell his nephew, Patrick, and we learn that Lee only comes around when Joe was in the hospital, which was frequently due to his congestive heart failure, which we are told about in a flashback where Joe's wife, understandably, freaks out when Joe and Lee crack jokes about it. Patrick is told in the background that his father died while the other players of his hockey team look on. Patrick then leaves and fails to express any emotion. Maybe he's been dealing with this and it's not a shock, but I don't know, because the movie thinks that refusing to give us any information about what the characters are thinking is the same as not spoon-feeding the audience. Hint: there is a difference.

Throughout the course of this first act we see Lee interacting with a younger Patrick, as well as his own kids and former wife. Since the kids are not mentioned in the present you already know they are dead. Lee seems to have a good relationship with them. This is also all in flashback.

Lee takes Patrick back to Joe's home and Patrick invites friends over to talk about it I guess and has sex with a HOT BABE. I don't remember her name because she's not a character. The hot babe reprimands Lee once for discussing funeral arrangements in front of Patrick because apparently this is too much for him emotionally because apparently her solution to grief is to have sex and not talk about funeral arrangements. Maybe this is how hot babes think, I don't know.

Later that day they get Joe's body and take it to a funeral home. We find out that Joe can't be buried for a few months because the ground is frozen and that they can't use specialized equipment to expedite the process because the cemetery Joe wished to be buried at is a historical site. Joe will be kept in a freezer until they are able to bury him. This, of all things, freaks Patrick out.

Then they go to the lawyer to read the will and Lee discovers that he is now Patrick's guardian, instead of Joe and Lee's uncle (who was a father figure to them) has moved out of the state for a job. Lee freaks out at the prospect of his new responsibility and we discover that Lee was the cause of the death of his children. He had a party at his house one night and, after everyone left, started a fire, before drunkenly walking to the store because he was too drunk to drive. He comes back and his house is in a blaze and Randi is screaming that her kids are in there before fainting. The moment is devoid of emotional impact because we knew Lee was depressed, divorced, and never mentioned his children and we know that probably meant they were dead. This flashback is contrasted with the will reading scene so that we definitely understand why he is reluctant about being Patrick's guardian. This whole scene takes twenty minutes and feels clunky and out of place in the middle of the movie.

Lee leaves in a huff with Patrick and can't find his car. I don't know why I needed to see them look for the car. Patrick then asks Lee to take him to his girlfriends house for band practice, and we learn his is dating another girl, not just the hot babe, because Patrick is AWESOME and he plays hockey, guitar, and has two girlfriends, just like every other sixteen year old I know. This girlfriends name is Sandy and she is slightly more of a character, although she says nothing about Joe's death and Patrick seems to totally forget about it in her absence, because he's trying to have sex with her. Sandy's mom asks Lee to come in for dinner but he says no because he is GRIZZLED and EMOTIONALLY DISTANT. Lee takes Patrick home and they have an argument about where they are going to live: Patrick wants to stay in Manchester, which makes sense, and Lee wants to stay in Boston, which doesn't make sense until later, when he tries to get a job in Manchester and can't. because everyone knows who he is and won't hire him because they blame him for the death of his own children.

Patrick storms off downstairs and opens the freezer and frozen meat falls out which apparently reminds Patrick of his father's corpse and he has a panic attack that lasts five minutes and is never mentioned again. We get to see that Lee has POTENTIAL AS A FATHER because he refuses to leave Patrick's side, even though they don't have any discussions about his emotions or thoughts.

We get another flashback somewhere in here where Lee sees his daughter's corpses being taken out of the now burnt down houses in body bags and he kind of reacts, doing that hunched over hard breathing thing which someone said was emotional enough that we get it but not so emotional that he comes off as feminine, which is a difficult balance people. He goes to the police station and tells them what happened and they let him go because he didn't commit a crime by being forgetful. Lee walks out of the room calmly, and grabs an officers gun and puts it to his head, pulling the trigger, only to be thwarted by the safety. This scene is actually pretty good. We see Lee's desire for retribution and his loss of belief in the fact that he is a good man. We see evolution in the character. In the present, Randi calls Lee to ask if it would be okay if she came to Joe's funeral. Lee appears conflicted about hearing from her, especially after she says that she is having a child with her fiance, but he tells her that she is welcome to go. They see each other at the funeral and hug briefly, but that's it.

Patrick emails his mother, Elise, about Joe's death and Lee receives a call from her, on which he hangs up. He doesn't like her because she's an alcoholic, which Lee seems to be, but whatever. He also refuses to believe that she may have changed in the last ten years because he hasn't changed at all himself. Patrick wants to see her but Lee says no at first before later letting him because reasons. Patrick has dinner with Elise and her husband, a very convincing papier-mâché puppet of Matthew Broderick who has four lines. Elise expresses to Patrick that she wants him to think of their home as his home too. On the car ride home, Patrick says the encounter was "VERY CHRISTIAN", which is an accurate approximation, and apparently bad because liberal Hollywood hates Christianity and thinks it's okay to stereotype people as long as they are white. Lee says that's good, she seems to be doing better. Patrick accuses Lee of wanting to get rid of him, a statement for which there is absolutely no evidence of at anyone point in this film. If this were a better movie, maybe we would be shown that Patrick is misplacing his frustration at his situation onto Lee but the statement is never addressed again. Patrick later receives an email from the papier-mâché puppet of Matthew Broderick that he wants Patrick to schedule all future visits through him because he's a controlling freak. Patrick slams the computer shut but doesn't say anything or react in any other way to this information.

Patrick and Lee decide to sell Joe's old collection of hunting rifles to pay for a new engine for the boat, which apparently makes money but I don't know how or why. Patrick is attached to it, understandably, and while Lee thinks it's more trouble than it's worth, goes along with it. Patrick takes Sandy out on the boat and lets her drive it. It's romantic I guess. After this, Lee takes them back to Joe's house so that Patrick and Sandy can have sex because every sympathetic parent figure would do something like that. Lee walks around town while his sixteen year old nephew bangs one of his two girlfriends. Because TEENS.

This leads to the best scene in the movie and the only one of any real consequence, in my opinion. It is the only scene which touches on real complex emotions and not basic stupid bullshit we've seen a thousand times. I've actually never seen a scene quite like this and it truthfully nearly made me shed a tear; I would have if I wasn't so goddamn masculine.

Lee, while walking around, bumps into Randi and another woman who is unimportant and whose presence was basically pointless. By this time, Randi has had her baby and we immediately feel the tension because we know the backstory between these characters and this is new information. They chat briefly about the baby and Patrick before Randi says "I don't have anything big to say" which is so wonderful and so real and so clearly not true. Lee tells her that's okay, and she tells Lee that she kept in touch with Joe after she and Lee divorced and that it's been hard for her to not see Patrick. Lee tells her she can see him if she wants. Randi casts her eyes down, and then draws them up while saying "can we ever have lunch?", interrupting him, and I love it. She's exposing herself to him again. She starts blinking back tears and they start having a years old conversation. Randi says she said some horrible things to Lee, things she says she "deserves to be in hell for" and apologizes, saying that her heart was broken and that his was broken too. Lee says "there's nothing there", meaning in his heart, which is a stupid trope for him to say but which is also something people definitely say all the time so I don't know if it's real or kitsch. But then Randi says my favorite thing in the movie: "I love you. I don't know if I should be saying that." She sprints over these words and briefly reaches out and touches him, and Lee doesn't really even hear it but it's so raw and so truthful, it blew me away, because that's what pain is. Our deepest pain comes from our truest love, and the pain of losing it turns it to anger and hate. We can see how further along the healing process Randi is as opposed to Lee, and perhaps the difference is the levels of guilt they feel. Lee runs away from the situation and it's a deeply human reaction - even though Randi is showing him love and acceptance, it's far too much for him to handle.

Lee goes to a bar, gets in a fight, and is helped by George, (the guy who worked the boat with Joe and called the ambulance) who was apparently also at the bar but didn't see Lee? It was weird. But Lee ends up talking with George and his wife about something, we don't know what because music gets played over it. We find out later that night (supposedly) when Lee tells Patrick that George has agreed to be his guardian so that Patrick can stay in Manchester. Patrick says that he wants Lee to stay, but Lee says "I can't beat it", and Patrick immediately accepts this and they don't talk about it anymore. The movie basically wraps up after this. We cut to a few months later when the ground is unfrozen enough for them to actually have the burial. Randi shows up with the baby and her fiance but nothing happens there. The movie ends with Patrick and Lee walking somewhere throwing a rubber ball back and forth with Lee talking about wanting to rent a two bedroom apartment in Boston if Patrick ever comes to visit.

That's it. That's seriously fucking it.

So here's the point. This movie had so much going for it. Great performances, great dialogue, great cinematography, etc., but a few key problems with the plot made it, in the end, a frustrating and inconclusive experience. The film shows multiple scenes that express the same point while failing to move it's characters along or express resolution to ANY of it's plot lines. Patrick starts the movie with two girlfriends and ends it with two girlfriends. Lee starts the movie depressed and ends depressed. He starts in Boston and ends in Boston. He is no closer to accepting the death of his children and moving on than he ever was and you end up feeling like the character is kind of an asshole. Because it lacks a strong central plot, the movie ends up feeling like a loose collection of scenes that all basically tell the same story, with no driving force. Much of this is also due to the extensive use of flashbacks. If the story were told linearly, it would have felt like a much more complete journey than it does in it's current form. Because the film constantly oscillates back and forth between Lee's former and current lives, they feel like two different characters as opposed to one who has changed substantially. The movie defuses it's tension because we already know the emotionally outcomes of it's most important revelations. It's like if you knew Bruce Willis was dead in The Sixth Sense - it would still be an interesting story to see what happens, but it would not have as much of an emotional punch if both we and the character knew it.

You want to stay two steps ahead of your audience. Hack Hollywood writers seem to want to try to outsmart that convention by laying all the chips at the table and stupidly thinking that their stories are just so compelling that they can ignore the basic story structure that has existed in writing for hundreds of years. Stop doing this. Just tell a story from beginning to end. People want resolution to the story. It doesn't always have to be a happy, predictable ending, but resolve the storylines. Otherwise, the movie ends up feeling like a waste of time. I didn't feel like I learned anything from this movie because none of the characters did!

Conventional storytelling wisdom would tell you that the plot should have occurred this way. Lee begins the story as a happy, well-meaning man who makes a horrible mistake and causes the deaths of his children. He learns to live with his loss through his relationship with his brother and nephew which gives him some sort of purpose, but he becomes more isolated over time. When his brother dies, he is thrust back into a role of responsibility and must learn to truly confront his past to be a good father figure to Patrick and this relationship teaches him about himself and begins to heal him. What's wrong with having the story go like that?? Just because it's conventional doesn't mean it's bad - you can tell an ancient story in new and interesting ways, and that story structure is effective for a reason: it has a beginning, middle, and end, and rising action, climax, and resolution.

This movie just throws all those parts in a blender and pours it out into a decent-tasting but ultimately unsatisfying smoothie. Only one scene manages to successfully say anything original or compelling about people and grief and processing loss. The rest is a grim still life.