Respond to these rapid questions in our Manchester By The Sea quiz and we will tell you which Manchester By The Sea character you are. Play it now.
In “Manchester by the Sea,” Casey Affleck plays a self-punishing, depressive loner (Casey Affleck) who slowly comes back to life after enduring a series of devastating losses. It is the funniest movie ever made about grief. The only thing that stands out about it, however, is that it is so diverse. This film, directed by playwright turned filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan, contains a plethora of emotions, people, and ideas, all of which are present in such abundance that if you ask someone to describe it, you should probably take a seat first.
In this story, you will learn about the complexities of forgiveness—not only forgiving other people who have caused you pain, but also forgiving yourself for the pain you have inflicted on others. In this story, parenting is explored from various perspectives: biological, foster, and impromptu. Moreover, it depicts a close-knit community that is primarily dependent on one industry, fishing, and that has developed certain ways of speaking, thinking, and feeling over the course of time. It’s also a full-blown melodrama, packed with the kinds of events that a silent filmmaker might be hesitant to include in one film for fear of being accused of overdoing it, but the characters are so emotionally guarded, at times emotionally constipated, that they keep the movie from becoming too much of a mess.
Lee Chandler is a loner who lives in a run-down basement apartment in Boston and works as a janitor. Affleck, who has made a career out of playing reticent, somewhat mysterious men, plays Lee Chandler. Following the death of his beloved older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, who appears in numerous generous flashbacks), he is thrust into the unexpected position of having to raise Joe’s only son Patrick (Lucas Hedges, Redford from “Moonrise Kingdom”). Gretchen Mol (also introduced in flashbacks) plays Patrick’s mother Elise, a drug addict who has been absent from the family for a long time. Lee despises her and is irritated to discover that Patrick communicates with her on a regular basis and has no ill will toward her.
It’s a mystery to the rest of the community why Joe thought a troubled man like Lee would be the best person to raise his only child, despite the fact that Lee’s affection for Patrick is well established, beginning with the opening scene of grade school-aged Patrick clowning around with Lee on the deck of Joe’s boat. Lee is a loner who is depressed and antisocial. He is a heavy drinker who is prone to fighting strangers in bars. When he returns to Manchester, he discovers that his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) hasn’t seen him in years, and that his old neighbors are either gossiping about him or looking at him with suspicion.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this Manchester By The Sea quiz.
While it is abundantly clear that Lee is a traumatized man who is still sifting through the ruins of a previous life, the film takes its time in revealing the nature of the catastrophe that befell him in this one. Upon discovering what it was, we are horrified to discover that it is even worse than we had imagined. We then understand why Lee not only resists the role his late brother assigned him, but also appears to be actively sabotaging the process.
On the surface, it appears that this is yet another variation on a familiar and often tedious Hollywood formula: the childish adult who is forced to grow up after being assigned the responsibility of caring for a minor. Lonergan, on the other hand, has far too much respect for his characters, his audience, and perhaps even reality itself, to allow himself to be led astray. Lee’s backstory does confirm that he is, at his core, a masochist who has spent the last several years severing himself from any possibility of happiness out of a sense of responsibility. However, the same flashbacks that reveal the horrifying details of Lee’s past life also reveal that he has certain tendencies that have always been a part of his character and will continue to be so in the future. Regardless of whether Joe appointed him as Patrick’s guardian with the intention of pulling him out of his funk or otherwise redeeming him—and the film never makes this clear, preferring to keep Joe’s motivations a mystery—it was a bad decision, as the film acknowledges in the final scene. Everyone, including Lee, appears to be aware of this.
Manchester By The Sea Quiz
In spite of his limitations, he strives to do the best he can for Joe out of a sense of obligation to him. The film follows him as he navigates the unfamiliar and often infuriating experience of parenting a teenage boy, serving as grumbling chauffeur for Patrick’s hectic social calendar (he is in a terrible rock band and plays on a hockey team, and he has two girlfriends, played by Anna Baryshnikov, daughter of Mikhail, and “Moonrise Kingdom” costar Kara Hayward), and attempting to balance his work life with the home life he never imagined he’d have This is difficult enough for biological parents and children who do not live in difficult circumstances. Although they’re too macho and sarcastic to discuss their relationship openly, the wounds show themselves in other ways. The most vivid examples are their disagreements about Patrick’s complicated love life, the fate of Joe’s prized boat, and the best way to dispose of Joe’s remains (Patrick wants him buried, but it’s a snowy winter and the ground is too hard, so they have to store him in a freezer at the funeral parlor until spring). The film is directed by
Also, you will find out which character are you in this Manchester By The Sea quiz.
Despite the fact that most of these details make the film sound unbearably dark, while “Manchester by the Sea” does occasionally descend into pits of despair, for the most part, it’s a lighthearted comedy. Emergency medical technicians repeatedly fail to collapse the legs of a gurney so that they can load it into the back of an ambulance, for example. Lonergan has an excellent eye for the small indignities that turn tragedy into comedy. And his playwright’s ear for witty one-liners is as sharp as it has always been. A moment or two is required to register some of the most amusing moments in “Manchester by the Sea,” primarily because they are not jokes, but rather recordings of people conversing. “Can you tell me what happened to your hand?” The question is posed to Lee at the dinner table by Patrick, who has noticed a bloody bandage Lee has applied after smashing a window with his fist. “I cut it,” Lee mutters. “I cut it.” “Oh,” Patrick says, barely lifting his eyes from his plate, “for a split second there, I had no idea what was going on.”
It’s worth noting that Lonergan has also directed two other classics, “You Can Count on Me” and “Margaret.” The latter was released in theaters in a butchered but still compelling version; if you haven’t seen it yet, watch the extended cut, which is available on DVD and the internet. His first film, about a brother and sister, was a compact, perfectly shaped, poignant, and hilarious piece of cinematic art (Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney). A much grander, messier, more ambitious work, “Margaret,” starring Anna Paquin as a young woman who accidentally causes a bus driver (Ruffalo) to kill a pedestrian, is a film of statements as well as poetry, mingling gallows humor, suffering, introspection, and hope in a film of statements as well as poetry. It’s possible that if you were to take the experimental structure and darker moments of the second film, and combine them with the compassion and wit of “You Can Count on Me,” you’d end up with something like “Manchester by the Sea,” which appears to be a traditional, even old-fashioned drama set in the real world, but takes all sorts of liberties with the arrangement of its characters and the distribution of its most crucial plot information. It doesn’t matter if every cut, transition, or rhythmic gamble is successful; what matters is that they try. You’re always more interested in finding out what’s around the next corner than you are in evaluating the effectiveness of whatever has just happened because the movie is so densely packed with life, in all its splendor and ugliness.
About the quiz
The majority of the film’s scenes are brief. Only a handful of people clock in at less than thirty seconds. Lonergan and his editor Jennifer Lame weave them together with a natural grace that belies their age. However, mosaic is not the only mode used in the film. A series of audaciously placed, surprisingly long flashbacks (some of which repeatedly interrupt a very brief physical action, such as a character exiting an office) fill the first half of “Manchester,” and the second half is filled with boldly theatrical moments of confession and confrontation that are also allowed to play out for as long as they are required. In the story’s final stretch, a conversation between two characters on a street corner develops into a duet of mortification and mercy that ranks among the best of Mike Leigh’s work (“Secrets and Lies”). Despite the fact that it only lasts a few minutes and consists solely of alternating shots of the characters, the emotions expressed within it are ratcheted up as expertly as the sense of dread you experience while watching a great horror film. When a scene pivots and transforms into something completely different, the effect is cathartic.
Also, you must try to play this Manchester By The Sea quiz.
At times, the images of the town, which are either snowbound or saltwater-blasted, and the soundtrack, which includes soaring classical music, old soul, American songbook standards, and jukebox rock, appear to be working together to express feelings that the characters are unable or unwilling to express themselves. During one of the film’s most devastating scenes, you can’t hear anything the characters are saying to each other, but that’s fine because their body language conveys the entire story. The contrast between the characters’ poker faces and their small gestures is particularly striking. The sea-etched panoramas captured by cinematographer Jody Lee Lipes add drama to comedic scenes and vice versa. There are certain movies that you’ll want to watch again with someone who hasn’t seen them yet, in order to remember what it was like to watch them for the first time. This is one of those movies.
For more personality quizzes check this: Leap Quiz.
