Monday, April 24, 2017
No hope, no love, no future
KENNETH LONERGAN – MANCHESTER BY THE
SEA - 2016
They have declared in all possible ways this film is a master
piece, and it is just my luck: it is. They have declared the main actor to be
best actor in I don’t know how many places, at least three times, and it is
just my luck: he is a very good actor. Best I don’t know, but very good that’s
sure. And yet that’s not enough bad luck since even the most important part of
this film is at least twice said to be the best original scenario. Only twice,
true enough. Hooray! So here I can be the third guy of the triad. The subject
of this film is fascinating. Some will say it is banal, and it is. It happens
all the time and every day, and yet it is mesmerizing because it is a subject
so few people would ever speak of, deal with, make a film from.
The main character, a janitor or Jack of all trades, is
living alone in a monastic room and has the reputation to be untalkative and
even cool if not cold with the customers. A couple of flashbacks later, we know
one night, his wife sick in the basement and his children sleeping in the
bedrooms upstairs, he starts a fire in the living room chimney, forgets to put
the screen in front of the fire, goes to the store for some shopping twenty
minutes away, more or less a mile away, and on his way back he finds out his
house has been burnt down to the ground, his children are dead, his wife is taken
to the hospital and he is alone. The police will classify the story as a sheer
accident in no way criminal, at worst some negligence and still in no way
criminal. He will try to kill himself at the police station with the gun of one
officer. Of course he will fail. And he will have to let the show go on.
He is surviving in a ghostlike life, feeling rejected and
becoming violent in numerous occasions when he feels slightly menaced. He has
not been able to bring closure to his mind, to his life, and he lives in the
absolute self-rejection, self-loathing of someone who considers he is
responsible for the death of his children, the estrangement of his wife and the
unhappiness of so many people, maybe of the whole world around him. He is
unable to just make some small talk with anyone, particularly women, even his
ex-wife when by accident he is confronted to her and the newborn child of her
new life.
Imagine then the worst possible event that can strike him down
a second time, even lower and deeper than the first time. His brother who has
some degenerating disease dies, more or less as planned, and leaves a sixteen-year
old son behind, and a will in which he makes his brother Lee the guardian of
his son up to the age of twenty-one. Lee is tortured by the idea, fascinated by
the abyss he may fall into if he accepts. He actually tries to cope with the
idea and moves to Manchester by the Sea, where he had spent most of his life,
to take care of his nephew in his brother’s house. But little by little he
finds out it is an ordeal and he finally will give it up. Luckily there is
always a better solution than just a foster family.
The nephew is just as embarrassed as the uncle, Patrick as
much as Lee, because Patrick has a closure problem too because he does not seem
to be able to really let his father go, though his behavior is more or less that
of a teenage American boy. The young Patrick puts too much on his plate: the
hockey team, a music band, two girlfriends, probably the necessity to think of
his graduation in two years and college after that. Yet he was living alone
with his father since he did not have a mother any more: she was an alcoholic
and moved away. But now she no longer is an alcoholic – but is she not really? –
he cannot cope with her and her new partner, both locked up in some deep and
austere Christianity and the new partner deciding he had to be the necessary
and unavoidable go-between for the son and the mother. The son could not have
any direct relation with her. She cannot come to closure either and the son,
Patrick, is lost in that inconsistent life that has no real rock to which he
could tie himself.
Strangely enough the uncle Lee and the nephew Patrick, both
unable to come to closure in their bereavements, find some contact somewhere in
that zombie life. Yet Lee cannot face that teenager, that child that
intensifies his loss and his impossible acceptation that life is lethal since
life leads to death in all cases possible. Bereaved he is, bereaved he will
always be. So he cannot take the responsibility of causing another drama,
another death, even though he loves Patrick and he has found out Patrick may be
in the process of falling in love with him. If he authorized this to happen he
would lead that child to his death. And yet in Boston where he has found a job,
he is looking for an apartment with an extra room in case his nephew wanted to
visit him and spend the night, which Patrick more or less declares improbable,
though we know he is attached to his uncle enough to want to visit him and
sleep over at his place.
It is amazing how in our male dominated societies two males,
no matter what ages they are, cannot establish an emotional and friendly
relationship otherwise than with fights or violent sports. There is something
wrong on this planet. Some say it is the animal in males that makes them
compete and fight, and that means nothing has changed for humans and they are
just as bad as orangutans, or elks and reindeers. That’s sad and this film is
bleak on the subject. We are living with our losses forever and we can never
really get over them. That sure is pessimistic.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 2:29 PM 
