As a Hollywood movie, "Manchester by the Sea" is not grand and dreamy, not grotesque avant-garde, anti-fake romance, anti-"light" life, is honest realism, but it is very literary and small.
The protagonist Lee is very ordinary, the appearance of sluggish and silent, such a character setting is enough to make life take off the coat, to show the original look: boring, repetitive, trivial, the film can not add wonderful and gorgeous elements. But after all, film is art, copying the original appearance of life will be dull and boring, and the stories of ordinary people must be told naturally and boringly. With the help of many flashbacks of memories, the director gradually explained Lee's past life in Manchester in Boston, which began to make people a little inexplicable, but he could quickly sort out Lee's past as a normal person: having a wife and children, happy and simple. In contrast to the current state of the "living dead", the film conforms to the psychology of the audience, and a tragic major life change is about to come out, and Lee's negligence of causing his three children to die in the fire has earned enough sympathy and pity from the audience in advance.
At the same time, the screenwriter of this film is also ingenious, in Lee's repressive life, interspersed with many life clips of Lee's return to Manchester to deal with his brother's affairs, and the adolescent nephew Patrick who has to get along with him, the lively and flamboyant youth color tries to reconcile the film's gray and gloomy main tone, which seems to be very metaphorical. After transforming into a 16-year-old handsome Xiaopa, he appeared with a bloody fight on the ice rink, and this scene of instant anger due to physical conflict cannot but be reminiscent of Lee's fight in the Boston bar, the reason is so simple that the other party looks at him twice. Both fights look impulsive, have the same appearance, and seem to remind the audience that Lee's taciturn reticence is not the old-fashioned composure of middle-aged people, but a rupture or termination of growth. Xiao Pa has many girlfriends, groups of friends, bands, basketballs, and ice hockeys, and from time to time he has played with his girlfriend, which is similar to The young Lee who drank, smoked marijuana, had a sticky wife, and was cheerful and cheerful. This weather reveals a kind of cyclical cold breath, coupled with the hockey coach's thoughtfulness to the bereaved father's little Pa as a person who has come over, it seems to suggest that you have to be happy, and the happy days will not last long. This echo not only avoids the silence of the plot like a pool of stagnant water, but also effectively dilutes the funny point of the film, so that the film's somber style can be seriously carried out to the end.
The film takes men as the main body, the emotional scenes are handled short and restrained, and the protagonist is also reticent, proving that the director has no intention of sensationalizing and tear-inducing, but the audience will take the initiative to lose control, tears will drip silently and coldly, and the lead actor Cassie Affleck is indispensable. Lee's stoic expression and blank and empty eyes are the only points of interest in this film, and they are also extremely heart-wrenching points. Cassie Affleck's superb acting skills in the form of a soul illustrate the state of being in which a person whose spirit has been completely destroyed is already a tombstone when he is alive.
How to save Lee, the film breaks the hearts of the audience and many of the supporting characters in the film. Ex-wife Randy meets Lee by chance, and she goes to tears in an attempt to use her forgiveness to bring Lee back to life, killing Lee more than guilt. Little Pasa asked her uncle Lee to stay in Manchester, but Lee said sadly, "I can't get out!" "I chose to return to Boston and live without dying, but the scope of my work changed from four to two. The audience's hopes are ignited again and again, and they are extinguished again and again, and finally they have to admit that there is no consolation for real pain, and that those people in life, those feelings, once lost, are irreplaceable.
Starting over is the best way to get rid of pain, but it's also the hardest way. The poet Severis said, "With what spirit, with what courage, with what desire and enthusiasm, we live our lives: we are wrong, so we come to change our lives." "Not everyone in life has an extraordinary spirit, not everything can not lose their desire and enthusiasm, not all the time can have courage and strength. The great pain of life, let it sleep may be the only way. The film does not use fantasy to cover up the truth, does not replace the truth with wishes, the ending makes people sigh, but leaves an attitude and courage to face reality to the audience: life is so, life is like this!