Breakdown of: Manchester by the Sea

First 30 Minutes of Film: 2 STORY TURNS

1–13 minutes: The first fourteen minutes establishes an overall understanding of who Lee is: uncle, brother, fishes, kind, has a healthy happy bond with family, but now depressed, alone and self-destructive — picking fights in bars makes the audience curious why has this guy gone from family member to lonely drunk.

1. 14 minutes in: First story he gets a call to return to Manchester. He arrives and brother is gone by sixteen minutes. There are many flashbacks throughout the film, but they are very well used because they actually start mixing into the film almost to the point the film becomes or at least feels linear to the audience.
2. 28–30 minutes: The second main story turn would be the flashback that shows an extreme contrast in the life he led in Manchester with the life he lives in the present that was established in the beginning living in Boston as a janitor. We as the audience begin to see he hold an extreme amount of guilt especially when he tells his children if they were not there he could watch the game in peace, but it has already been established that is not the case. He also mentions how at the playground he found himself “in pure happiness” which only tears the heart strings a little more as much as draws us in to understand and wonder — SO WHY THE DRAMATIC CHANGE, WHERE IS THIS HAPPY LIFE? WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS FAMILY?

30 minutes to 48–65 minutes — Midpoint & Act II

1. The third turn would be Lee going to pick up Patrick from school. Lee talks to the principal and they seem to know each other very well. Lee’s roots in Manchester run deep. When the principal gets off the phone he refers to a woman that it was “THE Lee Chandler.” And this is reinforced seconds later when Patrick’s teammates tell the coach what is going on and again the coach says “THE Lee Chandler.” At 38 minutes Lee is at the school to pick up Patrick, and this is the first encounter in the film where we see 16 year old Patty with Lee.
2. Next major turn is at the lawyers. This is when the flashbacks are so intertwined with the scene in the lawyer’s office the story almost becomes linear and that really is when you feel Lee’s pain and it’s deep. The trial that he has gone through with himself is gut wrenching. Probably the worst anyone could ever fathom.
3. By the end of plot point B start and going into ACT III we learn that he feels he has no right or is not worthy of ever being a parent is his main issue, which helps to understand why he got so upset when he gets scared when Patty tries to get out of the car to go see his dead Joe at the hospital.

The CLIMAX is really tough. Right when you think Lee will stay, and he seems like this will all work out. He runs into a Randi who pulls back all those emotions that he was just coming to terms with and then he decides in the end when George signs the papers for Patty to become his legal guardian. Lee, literally in dialogue with Patty, tells him “I just can’t beat it.” He thought he could and he was but Randi crying and saying she loved him was just enough for him to realize he can’t.

He learns for himself by the end that her moving on was to have a new husband and baby and it wasn’t working for him.

For Lee, his moving on was not about leaving Patty, but leaving Manchester and by the last scene you realized he has come to terms with that. He learns for himself that moving on was acceptance of the situation for himself. He learned that Manchester was the problem for him and Randi because Randi stayed and tried moving on with a new family as well as Patty’s mom, but it didn’t work for them, so why would it for him, he’s right and they were wrong.

For him, he had to leave it all but Patty would still be always a part of his life when he talks about him coming to Boston one day to go to college.