Mental illness is a topic that many movies tackle, yet few do it in a manner that presents the audience with any actual insight into what the person suffering from the ailment feels and how they go through their life. Many modern directors go the Scorsese route, creating a character that is self-destructive, while simultaneously hostile towards the outside world as a whole, Fight Club being the most obvious example of this post-Taxi Driver sub genre. Others dramatize mental illness, turning it into a simple plot device that serves the purpose of furthering the story without adding any actual depth to the narrative, as is the case in Shyamalan’s The Visit.
Kenneth Lonergan chooses a third way of looking at depression, the affliction of Manchester by the Sea‘s protagonist Lee, and it is through the harsh lens of realism. The whole movie is guided by this one fundamental principle. It never glorifies or dramatizes its characters, never portrays them as anything other than struggling human beings, going about their lives and dealing with the death of their loved ones. Lee is a troubled man who lost his three kids in a house fire. A house fire that was his fault, if by accident. His wife leaves him, but not before telling everyone in their home town that Lee started the fire on purpose, in order to get back at her for ruining his night. Lee’s life spirals out of control and the beginning of the movie finds him working as a plumber in a new town, drinking heavily. And then his brother passes away, shattering what little stability he had in his life. The bulk of the movie follows Lee’s attempts at taking care of his brother’s teenage son, making sure that everything is all set up for him after the passing of his father.
It’s a rough story. The moments of optimism are few and far between, overshadowed by the permeating sense of ennui that every single aspect of the film hammers in. The camera is more oft than not kept at a distance, completely stationary. The framing is flat, at times almost boring. The colors are somewhat desaturated, muted by the overall greyness of the atmosphere. The cinematography serves to accentuate Lee’s underlying issues. His world is small and uninteresting, one that is past its peak. He looks and feels like a man that’s just about ready to give up on everything. Casey Affleck delivers one of the best performances I’ve ever seen, giving us a window into the life of someone that’s hopelessly depressed and frustrated at his own inability to deal with everything that’s come his way. Lee dislikes himself and that reflects in his interactions with the outside world. He has trouble keeping eye contact with people outside his family. He prefers his own company and seems completely unable to keep a normal conversation going. But the most telling aspect of his self-loathing is his resistance to progress and positive change. Lee receives the opportunity to leave his one-room apartment and crappy, dead-end job in favor of a nice new home with all expenses covered, yet he refuses. Instead, he gets hammered at the bar in Manchester and gets into a fight (one that ends rather badly for him at that). It’s a move that makes not even the smallest bit of sense. It’s completely counter-intuitive. And that’s what depression is like – a constant feeling of unease and apathy, broken only by the occasional bouts of fierce self-loathing. It turns you into a mumbling, shambling mess, a shell of a human being. Lee is cursed to perpetually go over his past life, remembering the family and friends he once had, before losing everything in a cruel twist of fate. The film uses perfectly timed and executed flashbacks that show us a different Lee, one that has a direction in his life and doesn’t wander the streets with a somewhat vacant expression.
I believe this to be a near flawless movie. Some have, in retrospect, described certain directorial choices as bland and uninspired, but such complaints are completely missing the point of Manchester by the Sea. It isn’t flashy or glamorous. There is no hero in this story. It’s just us humans there. Nothing else. The camera work matches the tone, or rather helps set it. And that’s what great cinematography is – a visual manifestation of the story, a half-seen force that guides the viewer’s perception and augments the emotional or intellectual significance of the film’s themes. In Manchester by the Sea‘s case, the camera had to be just as understated as the character it was following, giving us a chance to view him through his own prism, rather than our individual preconceived notions of what the person is or should be.
Total Misfire. 