Kenneth Lonergan’s third feature is a study in the weight a man carries and the small town that keeps reminding him of it. Manchester by the Sea is a 2016 American drama, written and directed by Lonergan, that stars Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams, Kyle Chandler, and Lucas Hedges. It runs 138 minutes. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2016, was picked up by Amazon Studios, and opened in limited release on November 18, 2016, before going wide on December 16, 2016. It grossed $79 million worldwide against a budget of $8.5 million. The film is a hard, plain, and very funny piece of work about a man who cannot put down what he did.
Trailer, via Prime Movies.
Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler
Affleck plays Lee Chandler, a depressed and asocial janitor who lives alone in a basement apartment in Quincy, Massachusetts. Lee is not a man with a plan. He goes to a bar, brushes off a female patron who expresses interest in him, and gets into a fistfight with two men. That is the opening. Lonergan does not ask for pity and does not hand out any.
Then the phone rings. Joe, Lee’s older brother, a fisherman in Manchester-by-the-Sea, has suffered cardiac arrest. Joe dies before Lee reaches the hospital. Lee insists on being the one to tell Joe’s teenage son Patrick about his death. That decision sets the whole film in motion, and it is a decision Lee makes because it is the only useful thing left to do.
Joe’s Frozen Ground and a Lawyer’s Surprise
While making funeral arrangements, Lee and Patrick are reminded that Joe’s body cannot be buried until spring, because the ground is frozen. That delay is the film’s engine. Lee makes plans to remain in Manchester, living in Joe’s house until the burial.
When Lee meets with Joe’s attorney, he is shocked to discover Joe has named him Patrick’s legal guardian. Lee is reluctant to commit. The guardianship would require him to move back to Manchester, the town he left and the town that knows exactly what happened to him.
Randi, the Fire, and the Gun at the Station
Flashbacks reveal the rest. Lee once lived in Manchester with his then-wife Randi and their three children. One night after hosting a raucous party, an intoxicated Lee forgot to put the screen in front of the fireplace. A house fire killed his children.
No criminal charges were filed. The police ruled it a tragic accident. At the station, a guilt-ridden Lee stole an officer’s gun and attempted suicide before being subdued. He and Randi divorced. He left town.
Michelle Williams plays Randi, and the film gives her a scene that lands like a dropped weight. Lee and Randi meet again, and what passes between them is not closure. It is two people standing in the wreckage of a life that ended years ago. Williams does not reach for tears. She reaches for the truth of a woman who has rebuilt something and cannot make the man she once loved join her in it.
Patrick, the Boat, and the Mother in the Area
Lucas Hedges plays Patrick Chandler, Lee’s 16-year-old nephew and charge. Patrick has strong ties to the Manchester community and stubbornly objects to plans for him to move to Boston with Lee. He has hockey, he has a boat, he has girlfriends — Kara Hayward as Silvie McGann and Anna Baryshnikov as Sandy — and he has a life that does not bend to grief on command.
Patrick wants to live with his estranged mother Elise, who still lives in the area. Gretchen Mol plays Elise Henderson, Joe’s former wife and Patrick’s mother. Lee is opposed to the arrangement because her history with alcoholism led her to abandon her family. The film lets that conflict sit without resolving it into a lesson.
Lee commits to staying until the end of the school year. That is the compromise the film builds toward, and it is not a cure. It is a schedule.
Kyle Chandler and the Shape of the Family
Kyle Chandler plays Joseph “Joe” P. Chandler, Lee’s brother and Patrick’s father. Joe is mostly seen in flashback, alive and joking, and the film’s grief works because Joe is not a saint. He is a man who trusted his brother with his son.
The supporting cast fills in the town without turning it into a set of types. C. J. Wilson plays George Ellington, the Chandlers’ family friend. Tate Donovan plays Patrick’s hockey coach. Heather Burns plays Jill, Sandy’s mother. Matthew Broderick plays Jeffrey Garner, Elise’s fiancé. Josh Hamilton plays Wes, Joe’s lawyer. Stephen Henderson plays Mr. Emery, Lee’s boss. Kenneth Lonergan himself appears in a cameo as a Manchester pedestrian.
A Running Order of Grief
The film’s structure is not a puzzle. It is a sequence of obligations, and the frozen ground sets the clock. Here is how the story’s key beats line up:
| Beat | What happens |
|---|---|
| Opening | Lee works as a janitor in Quincy, lives alone, gets into a bar fight |
| The call | Joe suffers cardiac arrest in Manchester-by-the-Sea and dies |
| The telling | Lee tells Patrick that his father is dead |
| Arrangements | Joe cannot be buried until spring because the ground is frozen |
| The lawyer | Lee learns Joe named him Patrick’s legal guardian |
| Flashback | The intoxicated Lee forgets the fireplace screen; a fire kills his three children |
| Aftermath | No charges are filed; Lee attempts suicide at the station; he and Randi divorce |
| The standoff | Patrick objects to moving to Boston; he wants to live with Elise |
| The compromise | Lee commits to staying until the end of the school year |
That table is not decoration. It is the film’s argument. Manchester by the Sea is built on the difference between what a person can endure and what a person can fix.
What Lonergan Refuses to Do
The tagline is “I can’t beat it.” That line is the whole film in four words, and Lonergan earns it by refusing every easy exit. There is no scene where Lee breaks down and is healed. There is no speech where someone explains that grief is a process. There is no moment where the town forgives him, because the town is not the problem.
The film deals with depression, guilt, grief, responsibility, dysfunctional families, and post-traumatic stress disorder, but it never announces those themes. It shows a man who cannot sit in a room with his own name on a piece of paper. It shows a teenager who wants to keep his boat and his girlfriends and his hockey team, and who is right to want those things.
The humor matters as much as the sadness. Manchester by the Sea is genuinely funny in stretches, and that is not a flaw. It is what makes the sadness bearable to watch. Lonergan writes people who joke at funerals because that is what people do.
The Verdict on Manchester by the Sea
This is one of the best American films of 2016, and the published critical score of 9.6/10 is not generous. It is accurate. The National Board of Review listed Manchester by the Sea as the top film of 2016. At the 89th Academy Awards, it won Best Actor for Affleck and Best Original Screenplay for Lonergan, with additional nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor for Hedges, and Best Supporting Actress for Williams. Affleck also won the Golden Globe for his performance.
What separates Manchester by the Sea from other films about grief is that it does not confuse sadness with insight. Lee does not learn a lesson. He arranges a life that lets him keep breathing near the people he failed. The guardianship compromise is not a happy ending. It is a man finding the smallest possible version of a future he can stand.
The film’s real subject is not the fire. It is the years after the fire, and the way a small town keeps handing a man back to himself. Lonergan shoots the place plainly — Manchester-by-the-Sea, and other Massachusetts towns including Beverly, Essex, Gloucester, Swampscott, Lynn, Middleton, Tewksbury, and Salem, where the film was shot during March and April 2015. The water, the boats, the cold. None of it is asked to mean more than it means.
The performances are the reason it holds. Affleck plays Lee without a single bid for sympathy, and that restraint is the performance. Hedges plays Patrick as a kid who is allowed to be a kid even while burying his father. Williams takes a small number of scenes and makes Randi a full person with a life that continued after Lee left. Kyle Chandler makes Joe warm enough that his absence has weight.
The film’s only real risk is its own patience. At 138 minutes, it asks the audience to sit with a man who is not going anywhere, and some viewers will find that too slow. That is a fair objection. It is also the point. Manchester by the Sea is not a story about recovery. It is a story about the difference between surviving something and getting past it, and it knows those are not the same thing.
What matters most here is the refusal. Lonergan had every chance to give Lee a redemption arc and did not take it. The result is a film that trusts its audience to hold two truths at once: that Lee is responsible for an unbearable thing, and that he is also a man who deserves to keep living. That is harder than any third-act speech, and it is why Manchester by the Sea will outlast most of what came out alongside it.
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