OIFF Highlight: “Manchester by the Sea”

— a review by Paula Treener —

One of the sure highlights of this year’s Orcas Film Festival is “Manchester by the Sea,” an emotionally powerful drama written and directed by indie film director Kenneth Lonergan (whose brief appearance in a cameo role left me wanting to see more of this director’s acting).

In a superb performance, Casey Affleck develops over the course of the narrative from a monosyllabic yet charismatic working class lead, whom the camera follows over the course of his weekday drudgery, to a tragic character struggling with his culpability and loss following a harrowing event. We watch interminable scenes of his daily toil, shoveling snow, fixing pipes and clogged toilets and occasionally snarling at his rude clientele. His evenings are spent brooding in a local pub and often capped by an episode of violence erupting from his solitude.

Interspersed with the monotony of his existence are flashbacks which eventually over the course of the film unravel the grief and mystery of this character’s existence: we see a playful uncle and father, doting on his family, teasing his young nephew, kissing his children and wife, played by Michelle Williams in a stirring performance. Kyle Chandler, a quietly emotive actor in his starring roles (Netflix’ brooding family drama “Bloodline” comes to mind) is here masterful in a supporting role as Affleck’s salt-of-the-earth older brother who commands the scenes in which he appears, too infrequently for some viewers but an essential element of the plot.

Affleck is thrown back into his old hometown of Manchester, from which he has fled, and into a confrontation with his grief and inability to engage, by another tragic family development. The flashbacks ultimately reveal the source of his torment, as he reluctantly is drawn into a relationship with his adolescent nephew, played engagingly and convincingly by Lucas Hedges, as one of the film’s most appealing actors.

This film will no doubt prove one of the highlights of the 2016 Film Festival, for its superb cast, the finely nuanced writing and directing, and striking visual palette of the Massachusetts coastal city. It’s another tribute to the Festival that viewers will be able to see “Manchester by the Sea” Saturday October 8 at 7pm at the Seaview Theater.