1.
Manchester by the sea is a small town on the eastern coast of the United States. Compared with the world-famous large industrial city in the United Kingdom, it is located in the frontier and unknown.
Lee, played by Casey Affleck, sits in the lawyer's hut, looking out the window. The town is wrapped in freezing cold, and there is no sign of thawing and recovery. Just like his heart, shrinking in the thick snow and ice, it was lifeless.
He was originally a cynical teenager, and even if he became the father of three children, he was still a young child. Drinking alcohol, taking drugs, inviting friends, having fun all night, going out to sea on a cruise ship, tired of playing, lying on the chest of the already exhausted wife, acting cute, and then falling asleep.
The wife tolerated him and loved him, even though she was not a qualified and conscientious husband.
He is immature, has no sense of responsibility, and has personality flaws, but all this, sin does not lead to death. But because of his unintentional fault, the family accident and the catastrophic disasters directly sentenced him to death.
——After the accident, in the police station, when the investigation and questioning was completed, and he learned that the law would not impose any punishment on him, he took out the policeman's gun on the side and shot him in the head. He didn't make it, the gun was taken, but he'd spend the rest of his life punishing himself. He sentenced himself to a lengthy life sentence.
Then, he completely changed. We see Lee in the movie, who is always expressionless and alive like a zombie.
Casey Affleck gave the "Facial Paralysis" performance, but he was just right. Because the heart of his character has been completely emptied.
2.
John Gray said in "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" that there are differences in the way men and women deal with trauma and stress. Women talk a lot, while men usually dig a hole for themselves.
What Lee found for himself was not a cave, but a deep well with no bottom. Compared to his wife's hysteria and grief, he chose silence, a terrible silence.
He moved to another city and never dared to return to the sad place of Manchester by the sea. Occasionally drinking in the bar, he would lose control of his emotions and fight for no reason - that was the only outlet for his emotions.
He's also not lacking in sexual encounters, but he's lost the ability to form relationships with people.
If it wasn't for the sudden death of his brother Joe of a heart attack, he might have lived like this forever. But when things happened, he had to return to the old place to deal with the funeral, to face his adolescent nephew, and he had to face the traumatic past again.
It is in such a situation that the film unfolds slowly. In Manchester by the sea, an acquaintance society where all the neighbors and villagers can't look up or down, those people and things that touch the scene naturally bring Lee's thoughts back to the past. The reality and the past, very stream-of-consciousness, switch back and forth with Lee's thoughts, seamlessly connecting. The tragedy of Lee's life is slowly becoming clear to the audience.
I think Lee's older brother Joe is empathetic, he entrusted his son Patrick in his will to his younger brother, who was already dead. He probably understands that the way to relieve one kind of pain is to give another kind of pain, and the way to heal a relationship is to start a new one.
Even if it can't be cured, in the face of new real problems, the listless Lee has to cheer up a bit.
Lee and Patrick start a stumbling relationship. No matter how much Patrick wants to stay in this small town, how much Lee wants to leave this sad place, no matter how awkward or contradictory, the uncle and nephew have one obvious thing in common: Patrick, like his uncle, hides from pressure. into a cave. In the face of his father's sudden death, he did not cry out loud, and even some cheap sympathy from the people around him made him flustered and overwhelmed. In response to the grief, the uncle and nephew instinctively chose to disarm and surrender.
The two also have a common bond - the yacht called Mary Claudia. The yacht is named after Patrick's grandmother, a symbol of their blood ties and a memory of the uncle and nephew.
Most of the pictures in the movie are lingering cold tones. The only bright color that appeared, and the background music became jubilant, was when the uncles and nephews found a few guns left by Joe, and after selling them, they replaced the cruise ship with a new motor, thus avoiding the cruise ship being abandoned. The fate of the two - the common blood and memory of the two are preserved.
At this time, Lee, sitting on the cruise ship riding against the wind, also had a rare smile on his face.
But don't think that this frozen town is thawed, and that self-exiled soul has been redeemed. When Lee ran into his ex-wife pushing a new stroller on the street, he could no longer avoid the past and had to face it head-to-head, and he was instantly beaten to pieces. He said: I can't beat it, this is probably the case in this life, and his heart has long been empty.
3.
What impresses many audiences about this film is its extremely restrained narrative. Sadness is like a monster, being held down to death, and when it occasionally floats to the surface and bubbles, it is surprisingly explosive. Like the chance encounter between Lee and his ex-wife on the street, it has a special emotional tension, because the protagonist has been holding back and repressed for too long.
Some critics said that this is a typical white film about the lost value and social status of white people. In American society, the white center in the past has been gradually replaced by a kind of multiculturalism, and the living space and spiritual space of white people have been challenged and squeezed. Such commentary attempts to explain that the popularity of the film has a certain socio-psychological basis.
But Bill Gates also said in an interview that he was out of breath watching "Manchester by the Sea". Bill Gates, who was once the richest man in the world, the creator of myth, and the top successful person. The sense of loss and dissatisfaction with the desire for success caused by the squeeze of social identity should not exist for him. What touched him so deeply? I think it should be the suffering of life reflected in the movie, and the attitude to deal with it.
No one can escape the seven disasters and eight disasters in life. The Buddha said that all living beings are suffering, resentment and hatred will meet, love will be separated, and they will not be able to seek. What's more, in this modern society where conflicts are frequent, a lot of suffering is probably beyond the comprehension of the Buddha.
Nine times out of ten things in life are unsatisfactory, but it is only one or two of them. The existence of suffering is universal. Therefore, the film was released in China, and the depressed mood like a middle-aged man Lee was lying in ambush. In this country, some kind of coincidence can also be found-
in the sudden typhoon "Hato", a middle-aged man was reluctant to just After buying a car recently, under the persuasion of everyone, I still tried to "act as a car" and supported it with my body to prevent it from overturning. As a result, a strong wind blew, and he was run over alive by the falling car. It is a natural disaster and a man-made disaster, and it is also the hardship of a middle-aged man's livelihood;
a thermos cup triggers all kinds of self-deprecation about dignity among middle-aged men, which in turn leads to a kind of social disapproval of middle-aged men. group ridicule, which also reflects the suffering of middle-aged men under social pressure. Just as Li Zongsheng sang in "The Hill": Hippie smiling face, facing the difficulties of life...
At the end of "Manchester by the Sea", Lee finished his brother's funeral and had a conversation with the villagers about his parents and family. The villagers seemed to say casually: In which year did my father die, and he was originally a big living person, but he suddenly disappeared during a trip to the sea.
So this movie is different from many inspirational movies. It does not ask you to go to success after you finish a bowl of chicken soup, but tries to convey how we should behave when facing the impermanence of life.
At the end of the film, Lee leaves the town and begins his cave life again. It seems like everything is going into a loop again, but tossing and catching the ball with his nephew and expressing concern about his nephew's future shows that something has changed in Lee.
He is like the pool of stagnant water described by Mr. Wen Yiduo, but the stagnant water also represents hope.
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