While I’m being a film critic I’d like to say something belatedly about Manchester by the Sea. I can’t quarrel with the acting or the direction. I have my usual nits to pick about Boston accents and local goofs–what’s a convenience store doing selling beer at two in the morning? But I left the movie feeling annoyed and frustrated, and it took me a while to figure out why.
The point of the movie, it seems to me, is that the Casey Affleck character doesn’t change, because he cannot change; he’s too deeply damaged. So he ends the movie back where he started, more or less–living by himself, working at a menial job. He doesn’t get back together with his wife; he basically gives away his nephew. Fair enough, I suppose. But that means that nothing happens in the movie. Well, stuff happens, but it’s like real life–one damn thing after another, without form or meaning. No one really changes; we all just end up in a different spot because time has passed.
I have pondered this a bit, because I do appreciate that the movie didn’t go in for a soft-edged Hollywood ending. In that sort of ending, the responsibility of parenting his nephew would change Affleck, help him come to terms with his grief. Meh. But there could be perhaps a glimmer of hope for redemption. Or, if not, it could be a tragedy. Just not utter stasis.
Also, that scene in the convenience store really annoyed me.
right across the street from the Globe–that’s probably why they wanted to feature it, even though, by all accounts, the Jesuits handled their scandal far better than Cardinal Law. The scene that takes place at B.C. High is almost ridiculously person to me. The B.C. High principal portrayed was still the principal when my son attended the school. Paul Guilfoyle, the actor who plays an archdiocesan big-wig in the scene, went to B.C. High with me, and I acted in a couple of plays with him; he’s had a nice Hollywood career as a character actor. (It’s interesting and sad that another character in that scene, a B.C. High trustee named Jack Dunn, is 
The main character, of course, is a writer. In real life, Bryson was a middle-aged guy who took on the Appalachian Trail mainly because he had a book contract. That’s motivation enough! In the movie, he’s an old man who is taking on this challenge because he’s facing the reality of sickness and death. And the movie actually has a motif of Nick Nolte saying something like “Don’t put that in your book!” whenever something embarrassing happens, and Redford responding “I’m not writing a book!” He has a notebook, but the only thing we seem hi put into it is a note to his wife when they’re in a bit of trouble. Only at the very end, when Nolte seems to tacitly give him permission to write about their adventures, do we see Redford start the book.
quirky French law, Kline not only can’t sell the apartment, he has to pay Smith a kind of reverse mortgage every month. Drama, heartbreak, revelation, and resolution ensue. There is much talk of death and suicide. And there is a hunting rifle, which Kline plays with early on in the movie. We wait patiently for the hunting rifle to make its next appearance. We are not disappointed.
risking everything to gain legitimacy by directing and starring in a Broadway play. There’s the backstage romantic tension. There’s the jaded New York Times critic, writing her reviews in longhand on a barstool. There’s the ex-wife, the rehabbing daughter, the long-suffering lawyer . . .
articulate. Caine is insanely jealous. She comes home and in turn is jealous of him and the nanny. He decides to write a screenplay about all this. He invites the good-looking drug dealer she met in Baden Baden (Helmut Berger) to stay with them, basically trying to stage-manage his screenplay. There are complications. Jackson runs off with the drug dealer; Caine goes in pursuit. They get back together again, in an abrupt ending that neither my wife and I understood in the slightest. But perhaps that’s because we had long since stopped caring. (By the way, that sexy poster has nothing much to do with the movie, although Jackson does have a brief, weird nude scene. It’s kind of depressing to think that she’s now 78. We should all stay young and gorgeous forever!)
Richard Bowker 