Hanging on

Brian McFarlane reviews Kenneth Lonergan's film 'Manchester by the Sea'. Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, only his third feature in fifteen years, arrived in Australia garlanded with award nominations and justified praise from overseas reviewers. It is an uncompromising piece of work that resists the temptation to cosy up to us as its often-daunting story unfolds. This doesn't mean that it’s depressing - rather, it squarely faces from the emotional and character challenges it sets itself, while also featuring some sharply comic moments. The film seems to have been shot entirely on location in Massachusetts, and mainly in the seaside town of Manchester, even down to interiors such as the bar where the protagonist lets fly, which gives the film a wonderful look of authenticity. Not that this would be enough to sustain our interest over two-and-a-quarter hours if the locations weren’t superbly used to distinguish the social layers at work in the film.