Manchester By The Sea (2017)
It’s always January isn’t it? That somewhat bleak, recuperation and recovery month when the cinemas suddenly resonate with the flotsam and jetsam of the previous year, especially the award attuned ‘serious’ cinema that dominate the discourse of the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the BAFTA’s and all the others. I recall going to see Kenneth Lonergan’s previous troubled film Margaret during a chilly January release, a long gestating project that required the intervention of luminaries such as Scorsese – yes him again – just to complete the films editing and guarantee a limited domestic and international release. Five years later his follow-up Manchester By The Sea arrives on a gilded cushion of critical praise, already clutching a panoply of awards and nominations, with acting and screenplay nods seemingly guaranteed with this years Academy Awards are announced next Tuesday. When we first meet Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) we quickly parse that he’s a withdrawn and troubled soul, working as a handyman cum janitor in a quiet Massachusetts coastal town, prone to bouts of drunken violence in a local bar, while resisting the advances of men and woman into his hermetic, almost monastic world. A frosty morning phone call sets the story in motion – his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has passed away from a long-suffering cardiac condition, summoning Lee back to the titular Manchester to conduct the various legal and bereavement arrangements, also nominating Lee as the temporary guardian of his sixteen year old nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) since their alcoholic mother Elise (Gretchen Moll) fled, or was exiled from the family a few years earlier.
Beware gentle reader, consider yourselves seriously warned, as this film is fucking heartbreaking. Through an expertly orchestrated lattice-work of flashbacks we incrementally learn of Lee’s tragic back-story, ignited and recalled in his imagination by the stresses and strains of the present’s new emotional responsibilities, with many of his fellow townsfolk whispering of a dark history when his back is turned. Affleck has always struck me as a haunting presence, malevently malefic in Oscar nominated turns such as The Assassination Of Jesse James etc., adroitly amusing in the Oceans movies, genuinely certifiable in The Killer Inside Me. But beneath that sinister edge there is a vulnerability which reminds one of Montgomery Clift or early career Sean Penn, and he is perfectly cast and perfectly plays those qualities to the fore in Manchester By The Sea, wracked with guilt and withdrawn from the pains of the world, suddenly thrust into a new lexicon of blood-tied responsibilities that he struggles to surpass. Having listened to a recent WTF interview with him he knows from bitter experience the impact parental psychosis can levy on the family unit, how rage and for some substance abuse clouds deeper haunting problems of the psyche, and he seems to be drawing from that personal reservoir for this shattering performance. He’s a different man, happier, genial and invigorated by life in flashback, a severe counterpoint to the muted husk we follow in the present day, he’s bulls-eyed a nomination and potential Oscar win and this controlled and internalised turn would be my front runner for February.
This is very much a winter film, shot with a shivering authenticity in the small coastal town of Manchester which squats an hours drive from Boston, perfectly melding the seasonal torpor with the Chandler family tragedies. It’s a generationally blue collar community where the denizens love their hockey and basketball, they enjoy fishing with their buddies so they can enjoy a beer or seven, the blood ties that bind forming the spine of the community. Lonergan is too much a respectful chronicler of the human condition, of our frustrations and foibles to offer any pandering solutions to torment, he doesn’t posit such platitudes that obliterating events may ever heal or regenerate. Still, beneath that bitter observation there is a quiet tender core to the film as fragments of joy and relief still remain, and the continued affection between Lee and his nephew – an amusing Lothario in training – has also earned Lucas Hedges a deserved Oscar nomination.
While there is a drizzle of observational humour to alleviate the oppression Lonergan is also an expert in the minutia of day to day life, the small quiet moments signalled by the slight curves of a smile or a painful sideways glance, those miniscule moments of unconscious communication which can transmit more than a thousand word soliloquy. It’s also a treatise not only on the repercussions of tragedy and bereavement but on the administration of death, the protocols of passing. Who makes the phone calls to impart the terrible news? How do you arrange the details with the undertakers, and whom arranges storage of the cadaver when the ground is to cold to commit to a service? Anyone who is suffering some density of family strife and struggle – in other words 99.9% of the human race – will find the film brimming with empathy while perhaps an exhausting experience, expertly modulated and paced with key information being revealed in key emotional flashbacks, which as narrative devices are revealed with maximum effect. Sometimes the unvarnished truth of our lives and their unresolved and messy strands need to be reflected on screen, to remind us that we’re not alone, and not everyone can easily shoulder the burdens of their lives, the destructive decisions and drives, as traditional resolutions would have us believe. It’s very early I know, we’re barely a month into the year, but this deeply moving and tragic film is a certain contender for one of the years best;
BFI London Film Festival 2016 – Certain Women (2016)
There are a few filmmakers whose work I will go and see when I excitedly hear of a new project, regardless of trailer quality, plot synopsis or cast manifest. Naturally anyone who has been following this quiet corner of the internet won’t be surprised to hear that the likes of Spielberg and Scorsese, Fincher and Nolan, Malick and Mann fall into this exalted category (among others), but away from those imposing high-profile figures there are also the other, smaller scale filmmakers whom have quietly earned the Menageries continued support. If I throw some names like Sean Durkin, Sofia Coppola, Peter Strickland, Jeff Nichols or Sion Sono out there you should get the drift, although I’m sure there are a dozen or more others whose names escapes me now*. What can I say, there’s just something about the demeanor and approach of these creatives to the art form that gels with my sensibilities, I can’t really articulate this other than some sort of affinity in terms of the ‘feel’ or the ‘aura’ of their films, as opposed to any specific themes or concerns which are threaded through their work. One of the more recent elevations to the pantheon is Kelly Reichardt, an undisputed master of the ‘slow burn’ form of cinema, with her penchant for long takes, minimal dialogue, functional camera placement and empathy for realistically troubled, blue-collar characters. Her admiration seems to have steadily grown over the past decade or so, my initial exposure was forged during an unexpected viewing of Wendy & Lucy, where I was literally and figuratively blown away with a simple tale of a young hitchhiker and her dog, wandering to a heartbreaking conclusion through the economic aftermath of the global depression. Since then her stock has been raised through the well-distributed Meek’s Cutoff and to a smaller extent 2013’s Night Moves, one of my favorite films of that years Toronto Festival where I saw it in a packed house of North American devotees. Now she’s back with another acclaimed drama with a slightly ambitious twist, intertwining the lives of four women in small town Montana, in another brilliant and keenly observed drama.
The initial instinct is to frame this as a portmanteau film, a series of story strands through which the lives of four resourceful women intersect and are coolly and charitably examined. In the opening sequence small town lawyer Laura Wells (the criminally underrated Laura Dern) wallows in a slightly melancholic post-coital bliss, following a mid-day adulterous encounter with her illicit lover Ryan Lewis (James LeGros), in an opening sequence which feels like an unconscious nod to the opening of Psycho. Returning to work she patiently manages the expectations of her frustrated client (Jared Harris) whom is suing his ex-employer for a negligent termination claim. Next, and in the films weakest section Gina Lewis (Michelle Williams) visits a dementia dwindled relative with her husband Ryan (the already seen LeGros), she is in the midst of building a new home for her young family and senses an opportunity in reliving her uncle of some valuable raw materials he has lying dormant on his rural estate. Finally, in a quietly heartbreaking movement newly graduated lawyer Beth Travis (Kristen Stewart) is teaching an evening legal course to newly inducted state school educational staff, suffering a punishing, weekly, four-hour commute routine from her local up-state practice. Almost imperceptibly an affectionate relationship begins with one of her accidental students Jamie (a breakthrough performance from new-comer Lily Gladstone), a young woman of native ancestry who manages a remote farm and is evidently seeking some solace from a void of human interaction. Through slight, barely perceptible encounters and coincidences the lives of the four women cross and weave, in this muted yet affectionate celebration of small town lives and modest dreams.
Now, first things first – if you’re one for dramatic revelations and conclusions, for clear transformative three-act character arcs and resolutions then be warned – this is simply not the film for you. It’s the kind of story which is akin to curling up on a fire-warmed winter afternoon with a heavy-weave blanket, nursing a mug of steaming cocoa with a well-thumbed novel by Steinbeck or Cormac McCarthy to hand, minus the latter’s prevalence of ruthless violence. Like McCarthy it is ruthlessly confident in its pacing and structure, it certainly has a well-defined and curated overarching vision, championing a fidelity to the genuine dramatic lives of its participants, with all the quiet incidents and frustrations intact. Like all of Recihardt’s former work there is also an austere rejection of the standard dramatic model of engineered confrontation or resolution, including a resistance to any common weapons in the filmmakers arsenal, including a rejection of any hand-holding non-diagetic music until one final movement toward the end. So it’s the American equivalent of the Dardennes, of Ken Loach thankfully minus the political hectoring, all sprouting historically from the well-spring of Italian Neo-Realism, a holistic collection of the minor struggles and triumphs of live across these quietly captivating characters, or as one fellow movie-goer muttered to his partner as the credits rolled ‘life goes on, I guess’. I can’t in all honestly claim that all the threads are as gratifyingly stirring as the others, for me the highlight was clearly the Kirsten Stewart storyline while the weakest was the Michelle Williams interaction, her character and tale strangely amorphous and immaterial compared to what Laura Dern conveys with a lightly mannered sigh or Lily Gladstone signals with a darting glance of her mournful eyes.
I don’t know who sanctioned that hideous movie poster seen above, but I guess they have to push the established cast in a vain attempt to stir the docile masses out of their reality TV induced stupor eh? This year’s other quiet critical depth charge Hell Or High Water had its own specific beating undercurrent of economic malaise and frustration powering the story engine, empowering the protagonists to violate the law in that cathartic viewing way. Although you could consider them as companion pieces as Certain Women treads the same iconography of the forgotten by-ways and highways of small town America the energy arises from the internalized instincts of the characters, a reassuring shared glimpse into the lives of others, through which we can see some mirrored fragments of our trials and tribulations. I just love the sheer chutzpah of the film-making, in its own submerged, peculiar and idiosyncratic way. In the most moving section of the film Lily goes through the rituals of her day to day existence, conducting animal husbandry, estate management and domestic duties on her ranch, before seeing her new acquaintance Beth back at the evening class which is clearly at this point is the highlight of her life. Reichardt adamantly refuses to take shortcuts, ensuring that every liaison between the two is punctuated with the a montage of these daily rituals, and it is through this patience and fidelity to the real metronome of all our lives that a magical sense of connection emerges. Any other film, particularly those with any mandated Studio Executive interference would have those longueurs eliminated immediately, when in fact they are almost the entire point of the picture, building the rhythm of day-to-day routine which are elegically charged with unforeseen and unexpected interventions – a potential new partner, a financial success, a bereavement, a birth. I can’t really speak from any authority as I quite literally only saw a handful of films at this years festival out of the 250+ projects in the programme, but I am happy to see this wonderful film awarded some kudos from the festival panel, a well deserved plaudit and another step forward toward a quiet masterpiece that I’m sure Reichardt can deliver in the years to come;
* OK,you want a list? Then let’s do a list. How about we include Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Del Toro despite his recent disappointments, Lynne Ramsey, Noe and Refn of course, Haneke, Trapero, Shane Carruth, P.T. Anderson (despite the disappointment of the last mis-fire), Mungiu, Bigelow, the Coens, Lanthimos, McQueen, Alex Garland, Cuaron, the big screen MIA Soderbergh and on and on and on before we get into animation, current TV or documentary which aren’t exactly my forte….
Kelly Reichardt Double Bill – Wendy & Lucy (2008) & River Of Grass (1994)
Just thought I’d quickly pop in here and recommend that if you’re free you should catch Wendy & Lucy which is screening on Film 4 here in the UK this evening, you may recall that it featured as one of my favourite films of the year a while back, I’m looking forward to giving it another viewing;
More exultingly, if that’s the right word, is the screening of Kelly Reichardt’s earlier film River Of Grass which follows in the early hours of the morning, after catching over a hundred movies over the past couple of months of which I conservatively estimate that 80% of which is revisits of stuff I’ve already seen it’s nice to have something fresh to look forward to for a bloody change……
Blue Valentine (2010)
The spectre of John Cassavettes hovers over Blue Valentine, a 2010 Sundance smash which appears in UK screens just as the latest installment of the independently themed film festival gets rolling over in a frigid Utah. Like the most celebrated of Cassavettes films Blue Valentine places a solid emphasis on emotional truth and verité performances as it charts the disintegration of a marriage between Dean Pereira (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy Heller (Michelle Williams), at times it’s a gruelling and deeply painful tragedy to witness no matter how brilliantly and honestly it is played by the duo, all being dexterously conveyed under the careful tutelage of director Derek Cianfrance. Where Cassavettes moulded his films around an improvisational, almost jazzy ethos Blue Valentine is arguably more radical as its narrative segments around the initial flowering of the romance with all its sharp edges intact, involving a violently jealous ex-boyfriend and an initially unwanted pregnancy, interspersed with its final 24 hours chillingly foreshadowed with the death of the families beloved labrador. This prompts the couple to leave their young daughter with her grandfather so they can spend time together and establish how to break the painful news to their child, a fatal decision which brings their differing viewpoints and ambitions to the surface with terrible consequences. Cindy is a talented medical professional who has been offered a promotion to follow her Doctor boss to his practice in another part of the country. Dean’s appetites and attitude to life are in opposition, he prefers simple manual labour and clowning around the house with his family, she is the chilly and aloof parent, the practical adult to Dean’s romantic adolescent, their lives and dreams shifting to untenable positions which have caused fractures that are impossible to repair.
Well, we’re two for two this year as I enjoyed Blue Valentine much more than I expected, in fact I will go as far to say that this was an excellent and quite moving piece of work with a duplex of outstanding performances at its core. Michelle Williams cements the opinion of her being one of the bravest and naturally talented actresses of the moment, and Ryan Gosling – whom I’ve never quite got to grips with – finally delivers a performance worthy of the overwrought praise heaped on the likes of Lars & The Real Girl or Half Nelson, he is quite shockingly good as the loving but frustrated husband whose aging from a kind hearted soul to frustrated father is quite wonderfully conveyed. The unusual shooting and production pays dividends on-screen as Cianfrance took an unusual road in crafting those performances, the early sections were reputedly shot in one take, improvised scenes to emulate the couples initial orbits, before instructing both Williams and Gosling to live together for some weeks in order to learn each others idiosyncrasies, behaviour and quirks, and make them much more comfortable and familiar with each other before tackling the final, emotionally brusing Stuka dive of their marriage.
The controversial award of the dreaded NC17 rating (which was subsequently rescinded due to some skillful political maneuvering by executive producer Harvey Weinstein) is not in the slightest part justified, the so-called sex scene is quite uncomfortable to watch but essential to see as it exposes the fault lines of Dean and Cindy’s true feelings for each other, and just to be a little vulgar it’s not as if you see any genitals or frenzied thrusting anyway. Whilst I’ve invoked the godfather of American independent film – and I’ve done so in order to lavish the film with the honest praise that it richly deserves – it also reminded me of Iñárritu’s recent work with its intimately charged, almost informally crafted hand-held shooting ethos, as such as the film has attracted the sobriquet of being ‘misery porn’, an insult leveled by cretins who cling to the belief that any contemporary relationship themed movie needs Jennifer Aniston or Lopez in a starring role. Now we all know that I’m a hardcore horror fan who can comfortably chuckle through the most depraved celluloid crimes ever to violate the silver screen but I must confess I found two or three sequences in this film almost unwatchable, it is undoubtedly one of the most catastrophic date movies I could possibly imagine, being even worse than a long-standing private joke with a friend of mine who once took a young lady friend to see Dead Ringers on a first date. Like life Blue Valentine is chaotic and tumultuous, it does not shirk away from its difficult questions and offers no easy answers – a quite rare quality in US cinema – and as such it’s an early candidate for one of the best films of the year.
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