[9.0/10] There are some losses that you can’t come back from, that change you so fundamentally that even the most vital pulls and connections cannot bring you out of it. That is the core idea at the center of Manchester by the Sea. It is a film about grief, how we deal with it, and how its tendrils wrap themselves around the rest of our lives, to where some can wriggle free and some cannot.

The emblem of that is Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) a Boston handyman who is the film’s protagonist. When Lee’s brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies, he is called back to Manchester to settle his affairs, including what’s to be done about Lee’s nephew Patty. These events call on Lee to face the site and memories of his own traumas, as he’s trying to do right by his brother and help his nephew with his own grief.

What’s striking is the way that even before the exact contours of the loss that made Lee into the person he is today are revealed, it’s clear that he is a broken man, someone who is not fully present in the world. Some of this comes from the flashbacks pepper into the film, which show a much more jovial and engaged individual, cutting a contrast with the dead-eyed janitor who lurches through life in the present day. But a great deal of it comes from an outstanding performance from Affleck, who evinces a detached hauntedness from the first minute of the film.

When it is revealed, at the halfway mark, that Lee’s three young children died in a fire, a fire that he accidentally caused, its crystalizes the reasons for Lee’s demeanor and his difficulties in returning to Manchester and acceding to Joe’s wishes that he become Patty’s guardians. But to the film’s credit, it never underlines these points too heavily, to where they’re barely uttered or even acknowledged out loud, but permeate the background of every scene and every moment.

It’s never says that Lee so resists the notion of living in Manchester because it’s the place where his children died. It just shows him looking out onto the city and intersperses that with scenes of the grisly aftermath. It never says he’s reluctant to be a father because he blames himself for what happened to his kids, it just shows him struggling to give any meaningful direction to Patty. It never says that he’s overly cautious when it comes to safety, particularly the safety of children, it just shows him overreacting to a misunderstanding when Patty tries to get out of the car while he’s driving. It never says that Lee won’t grant himself the chance for human connection again because he doesn’t believe he deserves it and because he’s scared of where it might lead, it just shows him having ample opportunities to connect with people and invariably turning them down.

Much of this is conveyed in Affleck’s bravura performance. He portrays Lee as completely hollowed out by the horrors he’s been a part of, so convincingly deadened by them that he’s no longer fully alive, just this inert, barely there thing that continues to exist without any reason to. The little details of the performance win the day. There is his sublimated anger, at himself and at the world, that prompt him to get into bar fights to feel something. There are the moments where a real human being breaks through so that Lee can comfort his nephew. There are hints, in a heart-rending scene with his ex-wife (Michelle Williams, who makes a big impact in limited screen time) at the recriminations, self-inflicted and otherwise, that leave such overwhelming guilt lingering within him.

But the best thing to recommend the film is its ending. In so many movies in this same vein, the natural move would be for Lee to have his troubles with being back in Manchester and faced with the ghosts of his past, but that the importance of Patty’s upbringing and his brother’s wishes would be enough for him to overcome them. Instead, in a quietly emotional moment, Lee confesses to Patty that he “just can’t beat it.” The memories of his children’s deaths, of his inadvertent hand in them, are too much for him to bear, even for this, one of the few people, if not the only person, that Lee still loves.

There is boldness in that choice. It’s too much to call Manchester by the Sea subversive, but the heart of storytelling, particularly in quiet character dramas like this one, is change. It’s the old story circle again – a character is called to adventure, has an experience, and comes back changed. Manchester uses that structure, but subverts it. It shows Lee on the cusp of recovering, on the cusp of making a breakthrough, coming ever so close to having that change and epiphany and recommitment to a new life, and then faltering in the face of inescapable reminders of what he was running from in the first place.

It is, in that way, one of the truest testaments to grief imaginable. There are some things in life that cannot be outrun or overcome. It is not a heartening notion, but it is true to live, and Manchester by the Sea examines it with conviction, empathy, and grace.

It would be easy for Lee to be the bad guy, for Patty to be a brat or the piteous kid who lost his father, for the community of Manchester to come together to raise them both up. Instead, there is complexity in the film’s DNA, to where Lee is equal parts unreachable and understandable, Patty experiences genuine pain and difficulty but also reads as a genuine teenager with all the rough edges that come with, and the people of Manchester help the Chandlers as best they can, but help them with well-warranted reservations as well. And it posits that recovery, even when necessary to take care of others you love, may simply not be possible.

And yet, for all that the film has been decried or championed for its depressing qualities, it ends on a note of measured and earned hope. Lee is not ready to be a father again, to be back in the place where his children died again, even for Patty. But he is ready to open his life again, just a little bit. His new apartment will have an extra room so that his nephew can come visit and stay. We see him out on that boat, on the water once more, symbolizing the times when he could be happy and his old self, and it’s a sign that he is not better, but that for the first time in a long time, there’s room in his life for something better.

Lee may never recover from this, may never become the person he was or even a person who a stranger could stand to have a conversation with for a half an hour. But he is, it seems, ready to become more, to open himself up to the last person in this world that he cares about. Manchester by the Sea ends on a note of hope. That hope is measured, balanced out by the cloud of grief that Lee will likely never fully escape, but it is a sign that even amid the harshest of losses, the ones that take away everything, there are people who give us something to hang onto, something to live for, something that makes us just a little bit more who we were before.