Film Review: Manchester by the Sea

There’s a reason that Kenneth Lonergan’s masculine melodrama Manchester by the Seais making the rounds this awards season: it’s a film that explores themes of grief, recovery, and family ties in a psychological and sociological manner and does so extremely well. It’s essential viewing. The bitterly cold New England landscape only serves to highlight the wintry hearts of its characters in this tale and each of them is brought to life with precision by a knockout cast.

Every frame of Manchester by the Sea brims with the stuff that makes film compelling, leaving you rapt by the time the credits roll. There’s plenty of heart here; there’s meaningful prose posing as simple dialogue. And Casey Affleck’s performance is worth the price of admission alone. Films that deal with uncomfortable returns to the homestead are common. Seeing a protagonist reenter an environment – at once both stranger and familiar to the landscape – is a common study, too, but in Manchester by the Sea it’s simply fascinating. There are serious strings attached to Lee Chandler’s (Affleck) return to the eponymous home town….

https://www.cine-vue.com/2017/01/film-review-manchester-by-sea.html