“Manchester By The Sea”, the whole film and its name, filled with cold sea, bumpy boat, snow, fog, so that the audience directly immersed in that fingertips shivered in the cold environment. Anyone who has grown up through life’s trials and tribulations will feel a heavy sense of reality in this atmosphere, which immediately pulls you from the “movie” back to reality completely.Lee is a bit “unlucky” person, although not very rich in the beginning, sewer work is also very discouraging, but at least there is a beautiful wife, a pair of lovely daughters for company. He played ping-pong with his friends in the basement, not quietly, but just a little cowardly – as is always the case with disillusioned blue-collar workers. Then a fire destroys his home, turning his daughters into charred corpses wrapped in body bags in the arms of firefighters, and his wife breaks down and cries so hard she ends up in the emergency room. You made a horrible mistake, but that was it.” Such a response, he finally could not resist pulling a gun to the temple, but even suicide was stopped. At this point, Cassie’s performance is at its peak, the desperation and self-recrimination, mixed with cowardly overwhelmed, and the pain of not being able to live and die, enough for him to win the Oscar for gold.
Later fate did not smile half-heartedly on Lee. He divorced his ex-wife and his brother Joe passed away, leaving him a completely unexpected will to raise Patrick, who was still in high school, and he was overwhelmed, mixed with anger and frustration, and yelled at his lawyer, “I don’t know about this will, Joe never told me about it.” But there was no one to raise Patrick but him, and he accepted his fate and took him back to Manchester, a small town in the eastern United States by the sea. There, he lived a life of silence, refusing the kindness of others, exploding at the slightest point, his gloomy pain suppressed beneath his silent exterior, his heart broken beyond repair, yet he had to repeat his life day after day as if nothing had happened, driving Patrick, socializing with Patrick’s girlfriend’s mother, who appeared to be a bit socially awkward and completely unable to communicate with others He seems a bit socially awkward and completely unable to communicate with others. No one can see his broken heart, all the pain must be borne by the cowardly Lee, quietly and expressionlessly.
The only way to feel Lee’s broken heart is through occasional outbursts and social barriers.
Some people say the end of the story is rather rushed, but I don’t think so. Lee saw his ex-wife again, who had remarried and was pregnant, and couldn’t accept her sobbing apology and chose to run away from her, he couldn’t get over his trauma, and at the end of the story, he clenched his fist for the first time, hanging his head down, his eyes red, and said, “I can’t beat it”.
Pain is a devastating blow to an already unhealthy and wise mind. In the real world, a person does not rise from the blow, as in literature, they are mostly like our fathers, some choose to fight with evil and cunning, some learn to play the clown and tell jokes, some become Lee-style cowardly silence, some turn their attention to Some turn their attention to dreams, some try to explain the confusion through religion or philosophy, few, few, few people, can really be reborn from the pain, become a saint, you can’t even define whether such a new life is good or bad, in short, a broken soul even if all put back together, is not complete. This is the truth, but this truth is too cruel, too brutal, almost no director or screenwriter is willing to carry out the truth as this film, from one end to the other, people always like to hear those legendary stories, like the Shawshank redemption, with a glorious and happy ending, they do not want to see the cold ocean, snow, and cold wind, do not want to see a middle-aged decrepit loser, just like that …forever and ever without redemption.
Like countless silent, suffering souls in this world, no redemption. I once thought that the best films are of two kinds, one completely realistic, tragic and slightly warm, and the other dreaming, without any real. That kind of oscillation between truth and fiction is not the right attitude for a masterpiece. You either follow God or follow the truth, there is no right or wrong, but you always have to make a choice.
The town of Manchester is always cold and gloomy, the California sunshine never descends here, this is Manchester’s seaside. The expressionless Lee receives blow after blow, he tries to shoot himself, but still ends up living day after day. He failed to redeem himself, and did not continue to choose to die, I guess he may have lost the courage to kill himself after that gun was drawn. In fact, people like Lee are almost everywhere, silent, barely getting by, wounded, but without the ability to stand up. “You aspire to be good and full of enthusiasm and ambition, just because you have not been disliked by life, if you have been disliked by life once, you need to suck white powder to find the meaning of life”.
This meaningless life, can not be defeated, can not be redeemed. You don’t need to beat fate, you don’t need to redeem yourself. There is nothing to redeem, nothing to defeat, you just need to live. In life, no matter what happens, you have to live like Lee.
