Many people cried while watching the movie, I didn't.
For an extremely emotional person like me, this is rare. But it's not that I'm not sad, it's just that the sadness, and the tears, seem to be held back by something invisible.
Just like the layer of light blue covered in the film, it is misty and misty, and you can't grasp it with your hands outstretched, but it deeply affects how you look at everything in front of you; it is also like the protagonist Lee's expressionless face. , plain, even boring, but there is a bit of confrontational power in the dark, so that he can't show a smile for a long time.
It's a quiet story with neither ups and downs nor too much emotional catharsis.
It takes place in "Manchester by the Sea".
This is a complete place name, not Manchester in the United Kingdom, but a seaside town near Boston in the United States. It was originally called Manchester. In order to distinguish it better, the locals renamed this place Manchester by the sea.
The winters here are freezing to the bone and snowing heavily. When the raging cold wind spreads joy on the streets and piers of the town, people have to arch their backs, shrink their necks, frown tightly, and speed up their pace to stop the cold that goes straight to the bottom of their hearts.
It is like the sadness of life, quiet and deserted, watching you on the side, never yelling at you, just whispering with the wind from time to time, making you have to bow your head.
The waves here are silent and loud. When people are laughing and laughing, it watches everything silently; when people are sad and suffering, it tirelessly sings the songs of the past. It rarely brings storms, but it carries all the memories, lapping slowly on the shore and gradually soaking people's eyes.
"My heart is broken, it will always be broken, I believe you will too."
Lee and his grief
To me, the number "2" seems to be the key word in this sad story.
2 is two clues, two griefs, and two necessary challenges.
If "Manchester by the Sea" is likened to a nylon rope, it is made of two strands twisted. One is the present reality, the other is the memory in the mind, and the two appear alternately.
And these two clues developed into two kinds of grief for Lee. One is the death of his brother Joe, and the other is the fire caused by his own negligence, which took the lives of three children and directly caused the collapse of his marriage.
During the whole film process, there are also two problems that lie in front of Lee, or the test that Lee must face.
One is to accept the death of his brother Joe, and the other is to face his nephew Patrick.
The biggest obstacle to the former lies in Lee's deep love and reluctance for his brother, as well as the past that disturbed him, the good times they created together.
The fundamental reason for Lee's reluctance to become Patrick's guardian is his belief in his inability to take on family responsibilities, his inability to have love and happiness, and his deep doubts about the meaning of his life.
When the memory hit, director Kenneth Lonergan did not specifically remind the audience, nor did he make the picture appear yellowed or softened, and he did not dramatically let the characters of the past walk away from a white or a beam of light. Come out, but let those memories appear without warning.
Only by patiently immersing in the story can the audience slowly uncover the mystery in the subsequent episodes.
Because he didn't intend to throw all of Lee's grief and past at us all at once, but to tell them all.
Isn't the seemingly abrupt clip a reproduction of real life?
Regardless of the happy past or the haze shrouded in our hearts, our thoughts always seem to come suddenly and linger, making it too late for people to respond.
The scene at the beginning of the film where Lee and Joe and their young nephew Patrick are fishing on a boat is one of Lee's few fond memories, and it's also a flashback that runs through the film.
The director's depiction of this memory is almost always Long Shot, or even Extreme Long Shot.
It was difficult for us to see the faces and expressions of the people on the boat at that time, and we could only hear their conversations from a distance.
Perhaps it was a long time ago, and it was difficult for Lee to remember all the details at that time, or he deliberately did not recall carefully, for fear of evoking the turbulence of the past.
"Actually, we have nowhere to go, we are burdened with pain, there is no redemption, there is no relief, but this is life."
Maybe it's obsession
Lee's life was bleak.
It had suffered the most severe blows, and now it is a ruin that no one cares about. Lee was hiding under the rubble, always on the alert.
He closed himself up, didn't let others take a step closer, and didn't say a word, and he was full of hostility and misunderstanding with everything around him.
He is like his outdated mobile phone with poor signal , unable to find a sense of belonging in the moment, unable to communicate smoothly with others ; he is also like a quiet hedgehog, without too many words, but ready Thorn, quietly accumulating power, secretly competes with life and the world.
He hated and hated his young self who was ignorant of world affairs, paralyzed his brain by temporary happiness and indulgence, and finally caused a catastrophe.
(Speaking of Lee's wife, a digression. She was played by Michelle Williams in "Brokeback Mountain" as Ennis's wife. Ennis lied to her that he was going fishing with Jack. In Manchester by the Sea, Lee also often leaves home to go fishing with her brother. When I watched it, I couldn't help but think she might have some sort of fateful connection to the sport of fishing Hhhh.)
I once saw a hot topic on Weibo with the title: Why do contemporary adults cry.
In the following replies, many people did not cry when they learned that their relatives were terminally ill, did not cry when they worked overtime until late at night, and held back their tears when they were tricked and betrayed, but the takeaway was not delivered on time or It was when I forgot to bring an umbrella on a rainy day when I broke down and cried.
In their words: "I have endured so many big things, why can't life let me go in small things?"
Lee seems to be the same.
He can try his best to hold back his emotions when there is a fire, take his wife to an ambulance, hold back his grief after his brother's death, and try his best to arrange the funeral, or when his boss exploits him, he can pretend that he doesn't care and doesn't resist easily.
But a simple sentence, a glance, or an unintentional collision from others can irritate his sensitive nerves, causing him to quickly spit out the F**k that is often on his lips within three seconds, and by the way stretch out nowhere to put it. The fist hit the opponent's nose.
Lee let his life become increasingly decadent and fell into the abyss, but he has no intention of saving himself. Like a rebellious child, he stubbornly declared war on life, telling it that even if he was suffering and frustrated, it was because he gave up on his own initiative.
He was reluctant to admit that he was defeated by the trials of a cruel life.
And Lee has a person who is the opposite of him, and this person is his nephew Patrick.
He is good at socializing, knows how to deal with interpersonal relationships properly, has many friends, and is well-versed in love affairs. Compared to Lee's unenthusiastic life, he seems to be full of energy.
But he is not without the shadow of Lee.
In a way, Patrick is Joe and Lee's child. His childhood life lacked maternal love, his mother was an alcoholic, and he was always confused. He spent most of his time on that boat with his father and uncle.
On the one hand, he is as considerate and thoughtful as his father, and he has also become the lubricant between Lee and the world, on the other hand, he is as playful as Lee when he was young, with a casual attitude towards sex, a low sense of responsibility, and a profanity. , grumpy.
Patrick is rounded compared to Lee's sharpness.
In the face of all kinds of misfortunes in life, he was not obsessed, but bowed his head early, showing weakness. So he can forgive his mother, allow himself to cowardly turn around when he sees his icy father's corpse in the morgue, dare to reveal his negativity, and make no secret of his fear in the face of frozen chicken.
He reminds me of the crying baby at the funeral.
Maybe at this moment in life, only children dare to listen to their inner voice without any scruples, and their emotions and emotions can be expressed in different colors. Whether they are happy or weak, they can all be shared with the outside world.
And adults have become cautious under the influence of life's baptism and upbringing. They always remind themselves that they cannot be knocked down by life, because "people fight for a breath, and Buddha fights for a stick of incense."
As everyone knows, it is the burden of too many such obsessions that makes us exhausted and exacerbates the sadness.
"I can't do it."
pick up the baseball
Lee is not competing with himself, with the guilt and unwillingness in his heart.
No matter how indifferent, decadent, persistent, and not bowing his head, his happiness will not increase by one point, and the sadness of life will not decrease by one point.
The cold wind of the town is still blowing, no matter whether they are warm or thin; the waves on the seashore are still beating, whether their boats go out to sea with laughter, or they can only be quietly moored on the shore.
Only himself was left, wounded again and again by the sharpness of ego in his stubbornness.
Fortunately, Lee finally shed tears in front of George, admitted to Patrick generously "I can't beat it" at the dinner table, and began to gradually restrain his obsession.
After Joe's funeral, Lee and Patrick are walking down a country road. Patrick went to the convenience store to buy ice cream while Lee picked up a baseball on the ground outside the store.
Afterwards, Lee threw the ball all the way.
Once missed, the baseball fell to the ground and rolled to the side of the road. Lee didn't take a second glance and continued walking.
This was his attitude. When baseball doesn't give him that face, he keeps his self-esteem and pride and doesn't bend over to conform to it. When life brought him misfortune and pain, he would also grit his teeth and refuse to admit defeat, just to fight for that breath.
But at this time, Patrick picked up the baseball and threw it to Lee again.
This seems to imply that, after a brief time with Patrick, Lee will eventually learn to resign, learn to accept, and move on slowly.
Although he still can't let go of the shadow of the fire, and he probably won't let go for a long time in the future, he at least began to let go of himself gradually.
As for his deceased brother, although the grief of the death of his relatives was difficult to put down for a while, he also began to learn to allow this kind of grief to exist, and bravely returned to that boat to regain the joy of fishing.
As the boat swayed from side to side with the waves, Lee and Patrick quietly watched the sea with their fishing rods.
The dead are long gone, like that joke about sharks, blown away by the wind.
Just bow your head when you are too tired, and cry when you are sad.
We don't need to prove anything to anyone, we just need to live without regrets.
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