Before I get carried away with by my train of thought, I must first say that Manchester by the Sea was brilliant, and\u00a0Casey Affleck does a phenomenal job as Lee.\u00a0I saw this movie knowing nothing about it other than its title, so I will leave\u00a0the same opportunity to my readers who have not seen it yet by keeping details out.<\/p>\n
When the credits began to roll, the\u00a0audience remained still as if they had been petrified to stone and the theater filled with silence. Moments later, the stillness\u00a0was\u00a0finally interrupted with the onset of surrounding lights and\u00a0soft footsteps that signaled it was time to go. \u00a0Throughout the movie, director\u00a0Kenneth Lonergan blankets each\u00a0scene with the perfect sound, whether it was\u00a0a classical number by Handel, Poulenc, Albinoni, or\u00a0Massenet, elements of\u00a0an original score by Lesley Barber, or a\u00a0piercing\u00a0silence. Sometimes the music would overpower a\u00a0conversation in the film because the conversation itself didn’t matter; the feeling associated was far more powerful than the words.<\/p>\n
Words are\u00a0limiting because they form a framework for thoughts\u00a0whereas silence does not give any direction. We can use words and sounds to communicate with each other so we can follow and understand each other’s direction. Without these, we are left stranded. Perhaps this is why Lee is surrounded by silence during his story. When he feels the most pain, it becomes so overpowering to the point of numbness. The silence embodies the numbness. However, the absence of noise does not have to be a bad thing. It can be almost…liberating. Like a fresh start.<\/p>\n
So I refrained from spilling\u00a0details\u00a0about\u00a0Manchester by the Sea\u00a0because my words might have\u00a0influence your own perception of what you would expect to see going into the movie. They might\u00a0steer you in a direction that you would\u00a0not want to follow. For some movies, I think it’s important to have a sense of background and public opinion, but for this one, I highly recommend viewing without any expectations. \u00a0Instead, watch it for what it is in each\u00a0moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Before I get carried away with by my train of thought, I must first say that Manchester by the Sea was brilliant, and\u00a0Casey Affleck does a phenomenal job as Lee.\u00a0I saw this movie knowing nothing about it other than its title, so I will leave\u00a0the same opportunity to my readers who have not seen it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8152"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8154,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8152\/revisions\/8154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}