Alex writes about the differing\u00a0looks at the main characters’ lives in Manchester by the Sea and Jackie.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Today, while sitting in a theatre for a Tuesday afternoon screening of Manchester by the Sea, the lone brunette in a room full of white-haired octogenarians, the film faded out as its final scene came to a muted close. Two people sit perched on the edge of a boat, silently fishing before the picture slowly transitions to a black screen.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s it?\u201d one of the surrounding elders murmured.<\/p>\n \u201cI guess,\u201d said her companion.<\/p>\n That was, indeed, it. There was no rousing finale to send us flying into the streets of Toronto with a newfound sense of exuberance. This movie just kind of ended.<\/p>\n The film Jackie is an equally excellent film that delivers more of a sense of closure, albeit one that is built on a precise and well-constructed lie. We see Jackie Kennedy with her still-alive husband dancing in the White House, a picture of love and opulent happiness. It is only as viewers of the whole film up to this point that we are able to see this picture painted with doubtful, lonely hues of blue.<\/p>\n When I initially saw Manchester by the Sea a couple of weeks ago, I loved it. (I still do.) When I initially saw Jackie last Friday, I loved it. (I still do.) Over the weekend, thinking about Jackie while trying – and mostly failing – to eloquently explain its greatness to a fellow drunkard at a bar I didn\u2019t particularly care to be at, I realized what I loved about it were the same things I loved about Manchester by the Sea. Seeing them back to back today only cemented what I had become sure of in the interim.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s an odd moment of musical selection that occurs at the midpoint of Manchester by the Sea, a moment I wasn\u2019t initially sure I was accepting of. As the film\u2019s most tragic moment plays out, a grand, overly dramatic piece of music plays (it is from Handel’s Messiah). Houses burn, parents cry, the aforementioned surrounding octogenarians gasp, and even John Williams wonders whether or not this choice of music isn\u2019t a little too big for its setting. As the scene continues, as the music continues, everything escalates until our main character fails to commit suicide due to his lack of firearms knowledge. Lee Chandler is tackled, the gun is removed from his hand, and we snap back to the present. The music faded away, even though it was immediately clear Lee\u2019s memory of the moment never would.<\/p>\n But then, some sixty-three minutes later, the movie ended and the quiet landing reframed everything that came before it, as so much of the movie had. When Lee finds out his brother Joe has passed away in the opening scenes of the film, Lee\u2019s lack of emotion is initially confusing. As we learn the moment that came years before it, we start to understand why Lee is so emotionally blunted: when you are (drunkenly and accidentally) responsible for the death of your three children, your brother\u2019s congenital heart failure is a relative zero on the familial tragedy scale. Each memory that we see in Manchester by the Sea reframes what we had seen before it, but none does more of the heavy lifting than the obvious, choir-scored one in the middle.<\/p>\n In Jackie, there is (of course) a similarly defining memory, albeit one presented in a distinctly different way. There is so much more fame involved in Jackie, so many more people who care about the former First Lady\u2019s life, so there is so much more image construction to be done. The two framing devices of the movie are themselves\u00a0pieces of precise image construction, as (in the more important frame) Jackie tries to paint the picture of her life days after attempting to cement her husband\u2019s. Here, Jackie knows that she will be remembered, and she wants to control the way that memory is constructed.<\/p>\n Jackie approaches time in a way that Manchester by the Sea does not. In contrast to Manchester\u2019s relatively simple flashback structure \u2013 the story in Manchester is told mostly chronologically (albeit through two different, forward-moving timelines) \u2013 Jackie jumps all over the place. There are short bursts of memories scattered everywhere, like the script was shattered and rearranged in post-production like Steven Soderbergh did with The Limey*. Where Manchester by the Sea has a measured, decisive approach to its flashbacks, Jackie looks at them like scattered shards of a mirror that will never be able to show a complete reflection.<\/p>\n *With Jackie, director Pablo Larrain shot many of the scenes in multiple locations, stitching them together in editing to create a pervasive feeling of uncertainty.<\/em><\/p>\n The approach to cinematography in each film is similarly different. Manchester by the Sea takes a simple, well-composed look at its subjects, while Jackie is more adventurous. While the cinematographic decisions ruling Manchester were to never distract from the story and the performances, Jackie by contrast seems to specifically want to confront its viewers with certain questions about identity and cultural memory. So many shots are framed with a character looking directly past the camera at an off-screen subject; the vast majority of the scenes with Billy Crudup\u2019s unidentified reporter are shot like this, with he and Jackie talking past us as we sit directly in the middle of their conversation. What Jackie wants is for us to see her in a certain way, so the cinematography frames her in a precise, obviously thoughtful way. In contrast, all Lee wants is to be forgotten: ipso facto, the cinematography is forgettable*.<\/p>\n *This is not to say Manchester by the Sea wasn\u2019t shot by a talented cinematographer. Jody Lee Lipes \u2013 despite not finishing the last few days of the shoot due to the birth of his child \u2013 is exceptionally talented, and was Trainwreck\u2019s secret weapon. (In this overly violent metaphor, LeBron was the WMD of hilarity.)<\/em><\/p>\n Lee wants to live the rest of his life in anonymity, relatively safe in Charlestown, where perhaps a bank robbing Jeremy Renner may kill him but at least the ghosts of his past never will. Since his specific sort of fame is considerably regional, all Lee has to do is leave that particular region and begin to live the life of an anonymous janitor, returning only for the occasional visit with his nephew and accidental run-in with a crying Michelle Williams. Jackie, on the other hand, cannot flee. If her fame is considered regional, that region encompasses the majority of the world. What Jackie must do, in that case, is create a memory for herself before she can disappear from it.<\/p>\n The most intriguing element in Jackie is watching her doubt her contributions to the world, while simultaneously doubting her now-deceased husband\u2019s work as well. In the midst of the event that everybody is talking about, Jackie becomes obsessed with deciding how her and her husband will continue to be talked about in the future, with a telling moment in the film coming inside a car with her husband\u2019s coffin. Jackie asks her driver and nurse if they know who William McKinley and James Garfield were, each failing to recognize the names of two presidents who were killed while in office. Naturally, they recognize the name and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Jackie immediately requests information on Lincoln\u2019s funeral be brought to her, as she plans a funeral procession that will be too grand to ever be forgotten. She wants the future common person to remember her and her husband, and she knows she has to create the appropriate images in order for that to happen in a way she desires.<\/p>\n