The title alone made me a little reluctant to see this movie. The credit to Kenneth Lonergan didn't help. But it takes a lot to shoo me away from an Academy Best Picture nominee in the long term, and Dad and I wanted to get one more out of the way in time for the ceremony. Lion, Fences, and Hacksaw Ridge were not immediately available.
Middle-aged Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) lives as a Boston handyman with basically no social life beyond the occasional unprovoked bar brawl. His life gets more miserable still when his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, oddly enough) dies of a heart attack -- and to Lee's unpleasant surprise, Joe's will asks that Lee take care of Joe's 16-year-old son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Lee and Patrick have trouble seeing eye to eye on arrangements. For example, "Patty" would hate to leave his friends behind, but Lee can't stand to live in Manchester, where people whisper about him for reasons that take a while to become clear....
Prepare for plenty of flashbacks without warning. It gets pretty irritating in one scene with frequent cuts between the past and present with no obvious benefit to our perception. Fortunately, I got the hang of figuring out roughly when things occurred. We see from the flashbacks that both brothers are divorced, Joe because his wife Elise (Gretchen Mol) was a drunk unfit for Patrick's presence and Lee because...well, let's just say he made a mistake that cost him his fatherhood and then attempted suicide.
Elise complicates matters further when she reaches out to Patrick, offering an alternative living situation. Lee barely entertains the idea that she's changed enough for mere interaction to be an option. The input of her new husband (Lonergan alum Matthew Broderick) does not inspire confidence.
Did Affleck deserve his Best Actor win? Maybe; I haven't seen his competition apart from Ryan Gosling, whom he definitely tops. It is the best I've ever seen from, well, either Affleck bro.
My dad questioned Michelle Williams getting an Oscar nod for playing Lee's (ex-)wife, not because she doesn't act well but because she gets only so much screen time. And unlike, say, Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love, she doesn't really take command of her scenes. He also thought Hedges dropped the ball a little in a panic attack scene, but I reserve judgment, never having seen a real panic attack. I think Hedges deserved his nod but was rightly passed over for the trophy.
As in some other Lonnegan works, characters frequently swear, and they're not just easygoing about it; they're bitter. They also have some realistically strained speech, which helps justify the Best Original Screenplay award, but you may have to listen carefully: Lee's post-tragedy semi-reclusion causes him to mumble a bit. (I'm not used to characters with worse people skills than mine.)
We get traces of comic relief, mainly when Patrick is with his teen friends, but to include comedy in the genres would be all too misleading. Like I said, there's a ton of bitterness. To me, the main relief is in being able to sympathize with all frustrated parties. Though I lost patience with Lee once in a while and thought Patrick could use some straightening out, I never stopped feeling sorry for them.
MbtS would have been hard to sit through on my own. With my dad, the stress was mitigated, and we both appreciated the film overall. I advise you to watch it with someone else as well, when you both feel up to credible melancholy.
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