Lost in Boston

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA (A-minus) - This might be one of the funniest movies of the year. I know, you probably heard that it's a downer. And it is sad and bleak and moving. But it also crackles with sharply observed family interactions and engaging banter between a man who has lost his brother and the nephew he reluctantly returns home to take care of.

Casey Affleck wallows in the role of Lee, marking time in the Boston area working as a handyman in the dumpy apartment complex he inhabits (a suffocating basement unit, fittingly for his current station in life) and regularly drowning his sorrows at the local pub. He is trying to forget the horrors of his hometown, Manchester By the Sea, through manual labor and an exiled regimen of penance. Contact from those he interacts rarely land with him. He is alternately flirted with and dressed down by the female residents, and his reaction is similar.

He is snapped out of his stupor by news from back home of the death of his brother, Joe (a pleasantly wistful Kyle Chandler), of a heart attack. It was Joe's testamentary wish that Lee move back home and take care of Joe's 16-year-old son, Patrick (Lucas Hedges). Lee resists.

Lee once was married to Randi (Michelle Williams), and they were raising three children. But tragedy struck on a drunken night, and Lee will be forever haunted by it. You can't blame him for needing a permanent change of scenery. Flashbacks show Lee "in happier times" -- all things being relative, though, because he was pretty sour back then, too -- interacting with Randi and the kids and on Joe's boat with him and a young Patrick.

All this is juggled by writer-director Kenneth Lonergan, who showed himself to be a master of nuance and subtle human interactions in "You Can Count on Me" (2000) and "Margaret" (2011) (he takes his time). Lonergan has an old-fashioned, literary dramatic style, reminiscent of theater chamber dramas on a par with Eugene O'Neill.

The filmmaker leans on his four central actors, and he is rewarded with powerful performances. Affleck and Hedges sizzle together, bickering repeatedly in a charming family dynamic. The twist here is that Patrick generally has his act together -- he is an accomplished athlete and is deftly juggling two girlfriends, one of whom has a single mom (Heather Burns from HBO's "Bored to Death") that Patrick tries to set Lee up with, mainly to distract the mom while he goes in for the big score. The dialogue between uncle and nephew is witty and realistic. When Lee asks Patrick whether he is having sex with his second girlfriend (with just the right mix of avuncular concern and bro curiosity), Patrick says they've done "basement stuff." What's that? Lee wonders. "It means I'm working on it."

Hedges holds his own throughout the film, exhibiting both comedic and dramatic skills, in a performance reminiscent of that of Alex Shaffer as the troubled teen wrestler in another quiet gem, "Win Win," opposite Paul Giamatti. Affleck is solid as the distraught everyman. Here, though, we get to see both the depths of Affleck's talents and, occasionally, its limits. Granted, he is playing a stoic, emotionally paralyzed man, but Affleck's range never threatens to go off the charts. There is little nuance to his reactions, whether it is to Patrick, Joe or Randi.

And we also butt up against the limits of Lonergan's world view. This is yet another Hollywood film set in the Boston area, yet again with an Affleck affecting that patented blue-collar vocal lilt. There isn't much drama left to be mined among the noble Northeasterners. We get not one but two trite scenes of Lee punching out another guy in a bar for no good reason. Lonergan also likes to linger over local landmarks that he is enamored of, as if filming a home movie, and a tighter first half hour would have streamlined the narrative and brought the movie in under two hours.

But there is no denying that Lonergan's is a special voice in cinema. The pathos is profoundly moving. The knowing dialogue is quite endearing. His attention to the hum of working-class life yields authenticity. Like "Captain Fantastic" earlier this year, "Manchester" flips easily between laughter and tears. And it might be the first movie I've seen that pays tribute in such a heartfelt way to the often unheralded duty of the uncle.

And Williams, in a small role, holds much of the movie together. In one scene, a reunion between Randi and Lee at Joe's funeral, she shoots a glance across the room, one of those looks that only Williams can give, communicating so many different messages and emotions that mere humans cannot do the calculation.

When that's your utility player, you know you're in rarefied territory.

BONUS TRACK
One of the touching scenes is scored to the elegant old tune "Beginning to See the Light" by the Ink Spots with Ella Fitzgerald: