Manchester
By The Sea 9/10
This
will have some spoilers. Last night Cam and I went to see the movie
Manchester By The Sea. I wasn't quite sure what this movie was even
about but I like some of the cast fine so I wasn't opposed to
checking it out. We went to the Arclight over in Culver City which
was the first time for me at that location. Its not close to as well
set up as the one over on Sunset but its ten times better than The
Grove. That place is the devil. This movie is about a guy in Boston
named Lee Chandler played by Casey Affleck. He is a janitor for
multiple apartments and just goes about his day cleaning up and
fixing folks shit. One night he gets hammered at a bar before getting
into a brawl.
One
day he gets a call that his brother Joe played by Kyle Chandler is in
the hospital after having a heart attack. He struggles to get there
in traffic but by the time he gets there his brother is dead. This is
where I got sad as fuck because this is exactly what happened to me
fourteen years ago when my brother died. There is a lot of
awkwardness as people try to console him and he tries to figure out
what it is you even do when someone dies so suddenly. Lee decides to
go and tell Joe's son Patrick played by Lucas Hedges that his father is dead.
This
movie goes back and forth between the present and the past and shows
you why people react to each other the way they do and its done
really well. When you see Lee as a janitor and then suddenly you find
out that he was happily married with two young daughters and a baby
you wonder just what the fuck happened to this guy. They don't
immediately tell you so when they do it is fucking horrible. I won't
say what happened but when you see it it'll break your heart. I say
this to explain why it is such a big deal when Lee and his ex wife
Randi played by Michelle Williams. She gives him a call after hearing
about Joe's death.
Lee
finds out that he has been left in charge of Joe's son Patrick after
a will reading. He has no desire to have this responsibility. He asks
why Joe even did this and the lawyer assumes that he had spoken to
Lee about this. Lee wants to pawn him off to a friend of the family
because he knows that Patrick's mother can not take the kid. You see
in flashbacks why not and apparently she got worse at some point.
Patrick disagrees because he says she has changed after revealing
that he has been in touch with her for the past year through email.
I had
no idea that this movie was going to be as great as it was. It didn't
have explosions or a super complicated murder mystery aspect to it.
It was a well directed, written, and acted film. I can't even point
to one particular actor or actress because everyone was so damned
good. It didn't feel fake. I know that sounds weird when talking
about a movie but sometimes when I watch a movie something will
happen that will yank me out of it. As sad as the subject matter in
this movie is there are quite a few moments that will make you laugh
or smile unexpectedly. This was one of my favorite movies this year
in a year filled with terrible films.
No comments:
Post a Comment