Manchester by the Sea – My Take
A meditation on loss and guilt that left me cold, despite standout performances and haunting questions.
Date: March 24, 2019
Film: Manchester by the Sea (2016)
I will be honest: the film did not land for me. The story is very simple, and because of that it never became as powerful as it could have. Only one sequence truly grabbed me—the flashback revealing how the house burned down and why the children died. That moment took my breath away. I started wondering how anyone survives that, what the “right path” could possibly be, and when he pulled out the gun at the police station to shoot himself… I understood. Some burdens are simply impossible to carry.
Losing a child is something you cannot forgive—not yourself, not anyone else. Here it is not just one cause but several: alcohol, negligence, carelessness. When the police officer tells him there will be no charges, I was furious. Sure, it was an accident, he did not mean it, he will carry the weight forever—but when a mistake costs lives, is it still “just” a mistake? And it did not just kill the kids; it destroyed their mother’s life as well. Most people would crumble.
That is what my mind kept circling, and meanwhile I noticed how little actually happens on screen. It felt empty.
I did like the cast. Lucas Hedges is one of my favourites—he was the reason I stuck with it. He is excellent here, as always (check him out in Ben Is Back or Boy Erased).
IMDb gives it a 7.8, but I would peg it closer to a 6.1. That is what it added up to for me.