Early in Manchester by the Sea, there is a long shot of Casey Affleck’s character Lee Chandler quietly and dutifully shoveling snow. Lee, working as a janitor for a Boston apartment complex, focuses all his energy on the task at hand. He is a very different man from the one we see in the film’s opening scene: a gregarious uncle, joking around with his young nephew Patrick on a boat off the coast of Massachusetts.The tragic event that occurs in the intervening years is not revealed until midway through the film. As writer-director Kenneth Lonergan tells me, he would prefer that audiences not know the details of that tragedy before they see the film. Suffice it to say, it is horrific.

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