Manchester by the Sea

Manchester-by-the-Sea isn’t really a village that I would like to visit, even though I normally like similar areas and I actively seek them out. But what can you do with people who look as if they had been taking Xanax for two years, surviving in their strange vacuum of nothingness. Well, and Casey Affleck is rooted in this world, and probably wants to get an Oscar nomination because he is the weirdest of the weirdest and in some scenes he literally jumps between emotions like a flea from one hair to another. It’s a pity, as under diferrent circumstances this film wouldn’t be bad. But its endless length and the strange behavior of the characters doesn’t simply make for a good movie and the few interesting scenes unfortunately can’t save the movie. (21/02/2017)

A drama that does not hold your hand, forces you to read between the lines, and does so on a canvas over two hours long that does not begin with careless and ordinary dialogues full of chatter. Casey Affleck has found the role of his life, Michelle Williams shines even in a smaller space, and Kenneth Lonergan has created a drama that is almost too absolute and overwhelming to be heartfelt. Still, I wish him all the success in the awards season. (02/02/2017)

A film about human pain, guilt, failure, and the attempt to somehow cope with it all. It is pleasantly and cleverly cast, with Casey Affleck suiting his role as if Lonergan had written it specifically for him. I haven't seen enough of him to confidently say that he normally acts brilliantly, or if it was just a great casting choice. Unfortunately, Manchester by the Sea doesn't score as high with me as I expected because it only works partially. My attention was unilaterally drawn from the beginning to the end by Lee Chandler, while the director wanted to build the film on the relationship and confrontation between the uncle and nephew. However, Patrick as a teenager was not interesting to me, unfortunately. The film worked perfectly until Lee became a mystery to me, and I didn't understand all of the bitterness, emotional instability, and inaccessibility of his personality. The revelation should have come to me in the end. Nevertheless, I understand why there is so much talk about the film and why it is considered worthy of an Oscar nomination. Overall impression: 65%. (09/04/2017)

Lonergan is a slightly better screenwriter than a director and a way better director than a man with a feeling for choosing music. One of the best written and performed "classic American small - town dramas about unsolvable skeletons in closets" in recent years scores an own goal good with cheap targeted selection of classical string music. It is overused here and the most overplayed songs were chosen. It´s fishing for emotions, full of pathos, ingratiating and cheap solution. Which is in stark contrast to everything else, because Manchester does not offer anything that even remotely associated with pathos (let alone fishing for emotions) (and there are sequences that would clearly call for it) and there are not cheap ways out. As if the author did not believe that his own theme, actors he chose and dialogues he wrote, which phenomenally work with the unspoken "between the lines", will be enough for an emotionally overwhelming subtle drama, so he decided to make 100 % sure it happens but in a cheapest possible way. And it unnecessarily devalues an otherwise impressive experience. (03/02/2017)

A painful punch right to the heart. A film whose author must be on the same frequency as I, because I understood every scene. Everything was in its place, everything made sense. It’s been a long time since I felt 137 minutes passing so fast, even though on paper they should have dragged (and judging by the comments, they did drag for many people). (03/02/2017)