Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
One of the great things about movies playing film festivals is that they get to capitalize on a sense of discovery. That electric charge that jolts through critics and audiences when they realize they’ve got a live one on their hands. This week at the Toronto Film Festival, dozens upon dozens of movies are hoping to experience exactly that kind of jolt. For Manchester By The Sea, the new film from director Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count On Me; Margaret), that jolt of discovery happened at Sundance back in January. Variety called it a “beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama.” Now in Toronto, there’s something new: expectations. After the thrilling reception at Sundance, Oscar buzz for stars Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams, and a stirring trailer, Manchester By the Sea has become one of the fall’s most anticipated films.
That Manchester By The Sea meets those expectations and more is a credit to the cast, of course. Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, Gretchen Mol, and newcomer Lucas Hedges all give intelligent and affecting performances. But it’s writer/director Kenneth Lonergan whose stamp on the movie is the most crucial. Lonergan made his film breakthrough in 2000 with You Can Count on Me, a story about adult siblings whose bond in the many years since their parents’ death has been tested and tested again. That movie, quiet yet brilliant as it was, was a big critical fave and scored Oscar nominations for Lonergan’s screenplay and Laura Linney as its star. That movie played the Toronto Film Festival too, and now sixteen years later he’s bringing his third film here. Much of the reason for that span is that his second film, Margaret, took six years to make it to movie screens. Margaret was a towering, unwieldy, often brilliant accomplishment, and you’d probably get a lot of critics to say that one Margaret is worth a hundred Manchester By the Seas, but I’m not sure I necessarily agree. Not when a movie like Manchester reminds me how singular Lonergan’s tone can be.
The film opens with Lee (Affleck) working rather unhappily as a janitor outside Boston. Of course, the more you’re around Lee, the more you realize that happily/unhappily isn’t really at play for him. Lee is lost and out of place and angry and distant all at once. Then he gets the news that his brother (Chandler) has dropped dead of a heart attack, so he must return to his hometown of Manchester to deal with the arrangements, many of them having to do with his teenage nephew Patrick (Hedges).
This sounds like the setup to a LOT of indie movies you’ve seen, where the sad bastard returns home, to a place where secrets and hurt feelings lie, so he can find peace and forgiveness and maybe an Independent Spirit Award nomination. That’s not what happens here. By some miracle (or, truthfully, by Lonergan’s talent for balancing weird tones), Lee’s story is more crushingly devastating than you can imagine and yet also is genuinely light and funny. It’s not just jokes to break the tension, either. Lee and Patrick’s odd-angles relationship is oddly delightful. You’d expect the teen in this scenario to be surly and sullen, but he’s not quite. You’d expect Lee to resent Patrick, but that’s not how it works either. Lonergan makes sure his characters know how much they mean to each other, how much history and love bonds them. It is so reminiscent of the Laura Linney/Mark Ruffalo sibling relationship in You Can Count on Me.
Hedges is a real find here. I’d only known him previously from being the best part of NBC’s woeful The Slap. Here, he displays a great talent for subtle shifts in personality as he pivots from grief to the normal business of being a teen. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Michelle Williams doing great work with very little screen time, playing Lee’s ex-wife. She gets one scene in particular that will be making a lot of clip reels.
But it’s Casey Affleck who’s getting all the Oscar buzz, and rightly so. It’s a showcase kind of a movie for him, with an absolute knockout scene in the middle of the movie where he’s giving a statement to the police. The less you know about the plot, the better, but it might just be good enough to get him a statue come February.
