Kenneth Lonergan is not, perhaps, the most productive filmmaker ever. "Manchester by the Sea" is only his third movie as writer and director since 2000 - his first, "You can count on me" being a launchpoint for Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney, and his second, "Margaret", being controversially held up due to disputes in edits for five years before getting a half-hearted release in 2011. But he's a writer-director who really knows how to get to the human heart in all its complicated ways. In this case it's a film about mourning and connection, as Casey Affleck plays a disconnected, angry janitor who is suddenly required to look after his teenage nephew when his brother dies. This has a way of never going quite where you expect - the tragedy that informs Affleck's alienation is laid out clearly and the trauma is something he's never going to completely transcend - which means suddenly it's the small steps that matter, as a broken man and a boy who isn't as grown up as he thinks he is start to very slowly drop even an inch of their defensive barriers.
Michelle Williams' role is small but crucial, similarly Kyle Chandler's. This is not a film about transcending the pain so much as living with it still going on, and all the better for it
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