Third place:
Denzel Washington - Fences [126 points / 19 votes]
Second place:
And the Muriel goes to…
Casey Affleck - Manchester By The Sea [195 points / 28 votes]
“The first time I saw Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea, it struck me that the key to Casey Affleck's dazzling performance, and thus the film, was contained in four words: ‘...so I can go?’ This simple phrase, uttered at the end of a police interrogation after a domestic accident pertaining to his character Lee Chandler, is the breaking point between the gregarious, loving man we see in flashbacks and the sullen, maladroit semi-hermit who is the focal point of the film, and as such the expectations are that this should be a big emotional crescendo. Yet Affleck gets across the breadth of the damage with a disbelieving squint and a slight shake of the head.
“There are a lot of little moments like that with Lee. Though possessed of a formidable range, Affleck has always been a performer who can do a lot with a little, and with Manchester he finds an extraordinary showcase for his sharpest instincts. Lee is not a generally demonstrative guy - he keeps his emotions tightly guarded and submerged beneath quantities of beer, and the explosions of emotion we see from him are always of the destructive variety, whether directed towards himself or at a stranger in a drunken rage. The culture in which he was raised, valuing masculine stoic perseverance over catharsis as it does, combined with his towering trauma lead this man to express himself unintentionally, through uncomfortable body language and breaks in inflection, and Affleck is terrific at letting Lee's unconscious betrayal of himself leak through in tiny yet noticeable ways: the way his chin is constantly pulled into his chest, his inability to meet the gaze of anyone with whom he's speaking unless he's startled or giving orders, the very specific lopsided smile he sports in a bar when engaging a pair of strangers that might as well be the rattle of a snake, the constant pause before he speaks that belies a moment to think about the tactful response he knows he needs to give rather than the violent, impulsive response he's liable to (and wants to) give. (As someone who does this last thing a lot during his usual workday, I can't recall the last time I saw this particular verbal tic rendered so perfectly.)
“The pauses and bowed head and slouching gait and monosyllabic inability to engage in most social situations would in most people indicate a recessive personality, but that isn't Lee. Rather, this instance belies a man who has chosen to disengage because he refuses to allow his emotions a proper release; the recessiveness is a cover for boiling anger and self-loathing ripping and tearing at the edges of his everyday life. His return to Manchester after a long exile is ostensibly to bury his brother Joe, but in his untimely death his brother has offered him a chance at absolution in assuming stewardship of his nephew Patrick. Affleck has a tricky balancing act here - more than reluctance leading to warm patriarchal feelings, the script calls for Lee to add the discomfort at being thrust into the role of father figure into his constant discomfort and barely-restrained anger and somehow keep all that pain front and center while still allowing for an imperceptible series of steps towards an emotional thaw. He gets it all beautifully right; his Lee is a man who can deny an accusation from Patrick about doing anything to get rid of him and say it with a hesitant incredulity that indicates he's telling the truth and surprised himself by doing so, yet he'll also allow his defeated posture to ever so slightly devolve into a fighting-stance hunch when his anger gets the better of him and he puts his fist through a window then deflect a concerned query about the resulting hand injury with a simple, flat, ‘I cut myself.’
“The punched window gets at something deeper about the character, something that the script leads us to put together and Affleck communicates directly without ever coming out and saying so: The pain he feels and the self-destructive impulses he can't let go of are inextricably tied together in a death spiral of debasement and flagellation. If he cuts himself off from general society and chooses to live a quiet spartan life, it's not because he has no other options but because he gives himself no other option as a form of punishment. His insistent isolation, in this light, begins to resemble that of Hazel Motes shuffling around near the end of Wise Blood with rocks in his shoes and his eyes blinded - he does this because it's his lot in life now. In his eyes, it's what he deserves and has earned through his negligent actions.
“That's why the late-film chance meeting with his ex-wife Randi is so crushing - it's not just the raw emotion pouring through the scene, nor is it Affleck's hoarse, wavering exultations that he's empty inside. It's the fact that Randi represents the path he didn't take, the path of forgiving himself and moving on. Randi tries to push him towards that, forgiving him as a means to get him to do the same for himself, but it doesn't take. Because he's already been forgiven and he didn't want it the first time around. The first time I saw Manchester by the Sea, I thought the key to Affleck's performance was contained in the line, ‘...so I can go?’ I was wrong. The critical line, the piece that explains all the awkwardness and deliberateness and why his painful and tentative steps towards a new life ultimately lead him right back where he was at the film's beginning, is actually right before that, when one of the policemen at the interrogation says, ‘We're not gonna crucify you.’ That, then, is the reason for the squint and the head-shake and everything that follows. Lee has calmly and completely confessed his sins to the proper authorities, and he has not been punished to his satisfaction. He was hoping, even needing, to be crucified. Forgiveness has set him adrift inside a world he no longer cares to navigate.” ~ Steve Carlson
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