Yeahhhh so it’s Winter break you probably want to snuggle up in a blanket watching your favorite holiday movie drinking cocoa and just chill for about a month….Hahahaha… Not me…
I have a lot of movies that I need to catch up on… Because I love spending money on movies that I can just wait for red box…. No.. They’re meant for theaters people…. Stop it.
So Manchester By The Sea was the first movie I saw over break so let’s talk about that.
A lot of people were singing praises to the high heavens about this movie calling it one of the best of the year and honestly I can’t help but agree. This is a truly beautiful film with a simple story that you might think you know where it’s going if you watch the trailer. But truth is, you don’t. This movie avoids any sort of cliché it could’ve aimed for and made a movie like real life. This is one of the most realistic films I have seen in a long time. Which makes it so heart breaking as well.
The plot is pretty much a teenage boys father dies and his uncle has to go take custody of him, even though he has problems of his own.
The story is so simple but you honestly don’t know where it’s going. Every question you might have for the movie is answered in the movie, I tried really hard to find a plot hole but I just couldn’t find one. Which means that this film was extremely cared for and the film makers were extremely concerned on not fucking this movie up and not making it any less like real life.
Casey Affleck gives the best performance I may have seen all year in this film. You find out more about his character and what he’s been through in flashbacks (which are very subtly done, it’ll take a little bit to realize it’s a flashback but you’ll figure it out) but you can just see the frustration in his performance just by the look in his eyes, you can tell that he’s just had enough of everything and he’s just ready to flip shit but now he has a teenage boy to take care of so that just adds to that frustration, and once you get more in to his backstory, it’s heartbreaking.
But by far one of the scene stealers was Lucas Hedges who plays the teenage boy and he is terrific in this film as his first big role. He literally plays the everyday teen as he grieves over his fathers death, at some points he acts like he doesn’t care but you know that he does more than anything which makes the performance even more heartbreaking.
This is the kind of movie that just has no hope in it. There’s no real “happy” moment because there’s no real happy character. Every character in this movie is going through some sort of depression or anger that we as an audience start to feel because of how real this film is. There’s no fake moment, there’s no bullshit, its just life. This movie feels like you’re there experiencing it yourself and you’re experiencing the grief that they feel.
It’s an absolutely beautiful film and I recommend every to see it.
Just don't judge the movie by it's trailer.... The movie is actually a lot more sad than the trailer makes it out to be.
