Over the past few years, I’ve watched a number of movies while exercising in my home gym room. Some movies have been wonderful, some terrible, but for some reason, Manchester by the Sea stands out as one of the most memorable.

When I first watched this movie, I disliked it. I had no empathy for the main character other than agreeing with him that he shouldn’t make the choice of carrying an additional burden on his shoulders for life, despite the fact that others might look upon this as as repentance for his prior actions. When I watched the movie a second time, knowing what burden he was already carrying, I had more empathy for the main character, but I still didn’t like it.  Spoiler time… Lee feels that he is responsible for the deaths of his children so it is completely understandable that when he is asked to raise his nephew he is unable to. I mean. Let’s be real. You think you are a total failure and responsible for the death of your children. The police listen to your account of the matter and say “OK” and let you go, dismissing your feelings of responsibility. This weren’t a couple of deer; these were your children. You live your life with the guilt of what you’ve done even though others say it was an “accident” and forgive you but you can’t forgive yourself. Then you are asked to be the guardian for your nephew.  Yet your own conscience thinks you are a failure and not able to supervise any child again because of what happened.

On both viewings, I was also really put off by the dramatic music. Don’t get me wrong… the music can stand on it’s own but where and when it was used seemed annoyingly manipulative to me.

Despite this, I REALLY wanted to like this movie, and watched it a third time. On third viewing, I chose to focus on Lee’s nephew rather than Lee and tried to watch the movie from the nephew’s perspective. THAT made it a whole different experience and I ended up liking it, (except for the annoying music).