Today’s script and the film it spawned just became THE big story at Sundance this year, selling for a boatload of money. But is this classic indie drek here to depress us to death, or is it the next Ordinary People?
Genre: Drama
Premise: When his brother dies a long-time-coming death, a janitor beaten down by tragedy learns that he’s reluctantly been made his nephew’s legal guardian.
About: So far, this is the big movie coming out of Sundance. It sold for 10 million bucks to Amazon, and is written by embattled writer-director Kenneth Lonergan. You may remember Lonergan as the guy who wrote and directed the movie, “Margaret,” a film that, even though it had some of the biggest stars in the business in it, was stuck in purgatory because Lonergan refused to edit the sprawling film down. As a result, it wasn’t released until eight years later. I reviewed the script on the site to see if it was, as some had proclaimed, a “masterpiece,” and instead found very good evidence as to why the film wasn’t being let anywhere near a movie theater. It was a sprawling unfocused mess. Manchester-by-the-Sea is supposed to be a lot tighter, and is said to give star Casey Affleck an Oscar-worthy performance.
Writer: Kenneth Lonergan
Details: 134 pages (July 25th, 2014 draft)
![MBTS_2711[1]](https://scriptshadow.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/MBTS_27111-e1453822773697.jpg)
Don’t you just love feeling lousy?
I know that’s how I like to start my days.
Well, lucky for you, I’ve got a script that’s depressing as shit!
Look, I like character pieces when they’re done well. I don’t need a huge plot to be happy. But what I do want from my character pieces is some element of hope. I can get through the depression if I feel like there’s hope on the other side.
I just read this dystopian book, actually, The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, and this book is really depressing. Spolier Alert: The dog dies. And humanity is screwed. And the only people left on earth kill and eat each other. And the main character is lonely as shit. But you know what? The book eventually brings us hope. We see that there’s a silver lining at the end. And it makes the dark journey we invested in worth it.
But if you’re just going to depress me for two hours… we got a problem.
Manchester-By-The-Sea follows Lee, a 40 year-old janitor who sleepwalks through life. This guy’s clearly gone through some heavy shit, and he’s just not interested in fighting anymore. Well, more bad news is on the way for old Lee. His brother just died.
Luckily, this was expected. Joe, his bro, had congestive heart failure and had been fighting it for awhile. So everyone knew it was just a question of when. Even with that though, there wasn’t really a plan put in place for how to handle the situation. All Lee knows is that he has to go pick up Joe’s son, 15 year-old Patrick, to tell him that his dad has passed.
Patrick, who’s not the most likable kid (he has two girlfriends, neither of whom know about the other), is casual about the news. He wants to know what happens to all the money. Does it come to him? Since his alcoholic mom disappeared years ago, he figures that’s the plan. But since he’s only 15, Lee will take the money, as well as become Patrick’s guardian. This is news Lee wasn’t expecting and his first reaction is “no fucking way.”
The two spend the rest of the day doing person-just-died errands, debating where Patrick is going to live, since Lee refuses to let him live with him. During this time, we flash back to previous moments in their lives, most of which are arbitrary. Then, just when we’re getting comfortable, we’re hit with a big one. One night, a drunken Lee started a fire in the fireplace then went to get more beer. When he got back, his house was on fire, and his three young daughters were crispier than overcooked bacon.
Hey, I told you this was going to be depressing, didn’t I! The rest of the story follows Lee and Patrick around with the vague impression that at some point, Lee will officially decide whether to be Patrick’s guardian or not. At the rate things are going here, my guess is probably not.
Let’s start off with the dreaded double-tragedy. Why does it have to be a double tragedy?? Isn’t one tragedy enough for a film?? I guess there wasn’t enough depression so we needed to add more. I mean a grown man dying of heart failure is weak-sauce. Kill three young girls. Now we’ve got a picture, see!
To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this. This kind of screenplay is so out of my comfort zone, it’s hard to analyze it. Lonergan likes real life moments. He likes authenticity. He doesn’t want Hollywood bullshit. I get that.
But you have to realize that you’re making a movie. Movies aren’t life. They’re not 80 years long. They’re two hours long. So just the fact that you’re cutting 79 years out means you’re making choices as to what’s interesting and what isn’t. You’re “Hollywood-izing” your story whether you want to admit it or not.
So don’t pretend like you’re keeping it real by avoiding flashier plot points. For example, there’s a brief moment where it’s hinted at that Lee’s wife may have left him for Joe, giving us a meatier and more complicated familial drama to sort through. But the hint turned out to be nothing, keeping things straight, and for the most part, uneventful.
There are no plot developments in the present-day storyline. It’s literally like if you and I got in a car, did errands, didn’t really like each other, and then went our separate ways after two hours. That’s this movie. We needed more to happen. We needed drama. We needed an unexpected development or two.
And then there’s Lee. They’re saying Casey Affleck is going to get an Oscar nomination for this. I guess you can get a nomination then for looking really depressed? Cause, honestly, Lee doesn’t do much else. He just drives Patrick around and stumbles over his words a bunch. That’s his main character trait, saying some version of “I can’t do that… I can’t do that,” over and over again.
Which brings me to the dialogue. The dialogue here is probably some of the most realistic you’ll ever read. People don’t really say much. They stumble over their words a lot. Half the script is dual-line dialogue, implying that everyone’s talking over each other. All this gives the dialogue a “real-world” feel. But again, it’s like listening to a real life conversation. Real life conversations are boring. Your job as a writer is to dramatize dialogue, and Lonergan doesn’t do a lot of that. I guess because he’s afraid of “Hollywoodizing” everything.
Finally, one of the things I hate most in stories is one-note characters. The same emotion over and over again. Especially if it’s a negative emotion. Cause then you’re just sucking us into Depressionville. Because the truth is, I wanted to root for this guy. Lonergan did a nice job making us like him at the beginning (he works long hours as a janitor and has to do really shitty stuff just to get by). But the second he picks up Patrick, this becomes a one-note movie all the way.
And that’s my biggest thing. One-note is boring. No matter how you spin it. One of my favorite scripts I’ve reviewed, After Hailey, has a similar set up (guy becomes legal guardian of teenager) and it works because they bring other emotions into it. With even just a teensy bit of humor here, this could’ve been so much better.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Beware of one-note movies – movies with one emotion throughout. There are examples of them working in the past (Ordinary People comes to mind) but they are rare. Remember that an audience best feels a note when they have another note to compare it against. Depression hits more squarely when it’s juxtaposed against humor. Lonergan got that right in his debut film, You Can Count On Me, but he seems to have forgotten it here.
