"Manchester by the Sea" uses blue-green as the main color to outline Manchester in the snow by the sea. The sadness hidden under the calm narrative is like the undercurrent in the sea. Watching this movie in hot summer can cool down to a certain extent. effect…
The film unfolds from the perspective of Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), and takes Lee's return to Manchester to deal with the funeral of his brother Joey (Kyle Chandler) as an opportunity. And the flashback method gradually opened a wound that an ordinary family could not heal.
The film opens with Lee's interactions with three neighbors revealing his character and his day job as a handyman . Li repaired the faucet for the first grandfather and listened to him complaining about the troubles caused by the leak;
Fix lamps for the second old lady, and listen to her complain about the long journey to her niece's bar mitzvah;
Helping a third girl who lives alone to unclog the toilet after hearing her call a friend about taking Lee as the object of her sexual fantasies...
Faced with these, Li just calmly gave advice on repairs, worked silently, and deliberately kept a distance between men and women. He is dull and not smooth enough , does not deal with the world, even if he is attractive enough to women, but he does not seem to be interested in continuing to develop, just silently does his job and leaves. Lee's life is cookie -cutter, hardly interesting or passionate. He was always alone, drinking silently, watching TV, working, shoveling snow, until a phone call broke the dullness.
Lee's older brother, Joey, tragically dies of a heart attack , and Lee drives back to Manchester, failing to catch Joey's last side, and then he has to drive to tell Joey's high school son, Patrick (Lucas Hercules). Lucas Hedges) the bad news. The film recounts Lee's memories of fishing boats with Joey and young Patrick as he drives, as well as his happy family life with Randy (Michelle Williams) raising three children. It's clear that Lee used to be cheerful and chatty, and even joked with Patrick that sharks like to eat smart kids. These clips stand in stark contrast to the now repressed Lee , and leave viewers wondering what exactly happened to make Lee's personality completely changed.
It was only halfway through the film that the wound in Li's heart was torn open. Since Patrick's mother was an alcoholic and had been away from home for a long time, Joey's will specified Lee as Patrick's guardian . Perhaps because of the title of "Guardian", Li recalled his three children . It was an accident, after Randy chased away Lee's noisy gang of friends at 2am, Randy and the kids were all asleep, Lee felt it was still too cold in the room, so he added two logs to the fireplace, But he forgot to put the fireproof board and went out to buy wine alone. When he came back, the whole house was already in flames, Randy was rescued by luck while sleeping on the first floor, but their three children did not survive.
The emotions of the characters in this film and the language of the camera are very restrained . Whether it is Li or Patrick, they are calm and restrained when they learn of Joey's death. There is no crying and sadness. Li just kissed gently in the morgue. Joey's cheek as a farewell.
When patrick learned the news of his father's death, he was training with the ice hockey team. The director cut a long shot for the scene . We can't see patrick's specific expression and reaction, but we can roughly see his emotions It didn't fluctuate greatly, but calmly accepted the fact like Li. The perspective also allows the audience to temporarily withdraw from the emotions of the protagonists, and the perspective becomes like the rest of the ice hockey team, who can only watch this sadness from a distance . Patrick didn't seem to be affected by his father's death. After returning home from the mortuary, he even invited friends over for pizza, and continued to participate in the band's rehearsal every day, as if there was no sadness emerging.
But emotions always need an outlet . Since Joey died in winter and the ground was too hard, the funeral home suggested that the body should be placed in the freezer first, and then buried in the cemetery until the spring, but Patrick always opposed this plan without explaining why. Until one night when Patrick came to the kitchen to open the refrigerator, the chicken in the freezer fell out. He picked it up and stuffed it into the refrigerator. Looking at the frozen meat, he suddenly began to collapse and kept trying to close the stuck refrigerator door.
Later, in the conversation with Li, he confided his heart. Frozen meat reminded him of his father's body. He just didn't want his father's body to be placed in the freezer. Patrick's image has always been busy with a colorful campus life and calm about his father's death. Even at the last time in the morgue, he just took a quick look and left immediately. He looked a little indifferent. It's not as easy as it seems, he just needs an opportunity to release his emotions .
The opportunity for Lee was a reunion with Randy . Li accidentally met Randy on the road, who had formed a new family again. Randy offered to invite Li to have lunch together, but Li Wanyan refused. Then Randy apologized to Li with a choked sobs, saying that she had said a lot to Li when the accident happened, and she didn't have to bear the responsibility for the incident, but Li was depressed ever since. Surprisingly, she cried and said " I love you (I love you) " to Li, they separated not because they didn't love, but because the two broken hearts couldn't face the unhealed crack again.
It's an impressively long shot , where the camera sits silently, focusing on both actors' excellent performances, with Randy's excitement colliding with Lee's resistance to the subject. After many years, Randy finally let go of the blame for Lee, and Lee just wanted Randy to be happy. Although they both still love each other, the accident was like the wall separating them in the picture, and the estrangement between them could not be eliminated .
After the reunion, Li was in a complicated mood. He went to a friend's bar to drink and had a second fight in the film . The first fight was also in a bar, at the beginning of the movie, also provoked by Lee for no reason. Li was always angry in his heart. He hated himself. He directly caused the accident. He tried to shoot himself, but was rescued by the police. His pointless fights are like a self-mutilating act , he can't make himself feel better by blaming others like Randy, he blames himself but has nowhere to vent, only tormenting himself by fighting and hurting himself.
After he was beaten and bleeding, Li burst into tears for the first time. For a long time, he closed himself off and did not want to communicate with others. The conversation with Randy deeply touched him, and for the first time, Li vented out that he had been repressed . emotion .
Near the end of the film, Lee decided to let his old friends George and his wife adopt Patrick, and he still wanted to return to Boston to live. Patrick asked him why he couldn't stay together. Lee said " I can't beat it (I can't come out) ". This is a helpless and heart-wrenching sentence. Not everyone can get out of the shadows. Some of the pain is too heavy, and it cannot be cured even after time.
In fact, Li is also quietly changing. From the beginning, he ignored Patrick's advice and decided to go to Boston together. Later, he gradually thought about Patrick , and because he accidentally fell asleep and burned the sauce, it reminded him of his past mistakes. , fearing that the tragedy would happen again, Lee finally decided to keep Patrick in Manchester. Likewise, Lee originally wanted to sell Joey's boat despite Patrick's resistance, as the engine was broken and repairs would cost a fortune, but in the end Lee sold the gun and got a new engine to hold the boat. At the end of the film, Lee mentions that he wants to find a two-room house in Boston so that Patrick can come and live easily, which means that he has accepted Patrick as a part of his life, he is no longer a house like he used to be Isolated .
Many have scars, and both Patrick's hockey coach and Lee's clients have mentioned their father's untimely death, and despite the difficulty, they have come out and continue to live well. The ending is fixed on the scene of Lee and Patrick fishing together on a boat, just like they did when Patrick was a child, although things have gone wrong, the living people still have to keep each other warm and cherish .
View more about Manchester by the Sea reviews
