I didn't get the point of that. I hardly noticed the two guys looking at him. They did show the girl that purposefully spilled her beer on him laughing with two othe people. That should have bothered him more. Showing both those groups in the bar through his eyes I thought he was just going to walk out. The punch really seems uncalled for. Any thoughts on this.
shareI'm the script they are described as people getting a drink after work not a gay couple and he was just getting into a fight to punish himself.
shareYeah I didn't get the sense that they were a gay couple either. I guess people just looking at him in that town and him being in a drunken state really stirred some emotions that he had to let out like you said.
sharei'm pretty sure they were checking him out, if not mocking him in some way. when he walks over they say something like 'oh here he comes'.
Plot hole - Aspect of a film that is misunderstood or missed while using your smart phone.
That went over my head, too, 'cagraves', but there was so much else going on in this movie that I didn't linger over what it could have been all about. Drinking makes some guys violent, I guess. Repressed anger gets unleashed. Innocent bystanders get victimized.
I was glad to see all those other guys coming in as backup, though. They put Affleck in his place, right quick.
There is zero indication that the men in the bar are or are not gay. Either way, Lee goes over for no reason to do with this. He goes over 'cause when he gets drunk he needs to let out his own emotion in the only way it can get out: physical rage & likely on some level he also holds himself so responsible for *spoilery events* that when drunk, every look his way feels like a look of judgement and he wants to take that punishment he feels he deserves from these folks too...
shareThank you that was well said. End it makes a lot of sense to.
shareNo, there is a reason.(Incoming spoilers look away) In his hometown, everyone knows who he is and thinks he killed his kids on purpose. These guys looking at him and who seem to be talking about him reminds him of that. That's why in my opinion, he gets angry, goes there and start a fight.
shareI didn't think this at the time but in retrospect I think this is spot on. I initially thought the two guys might be gay friends, possibly a couple, especially the way they say with some excitability, "He's coming over...," and Lee appears to flirt with them by putting his arms on their shoulders and resting himself between them. I suspect it's a way of adding colour to the exchange while masking the actual reveal that doesn't come for another hour or so.
It's the same way the hockey players say, "THE Lee Chandler?," that leads us to suspect that he might've at one time been a local sports hero of some legend who had gone to seed but later his notoriety is revealed to be of an altogether different sort.
But yeah, the exchange with the two guys only makes sense in retrospect and when the same action is repeated later in the film, twice if you count the window, you understand the randomness of the target and the specificity of his combustibility.
SPOILERS.
It's true what you say about his hometown. But also, I'm sure the extent of surely some (many) of the stories that have circulated Lee's hometown in the years since that night are due to things such as the fact that Lee himself moved away pretty soon - his absence there causes the mystique to grow. And also Randi must have been in a right state herself at the time. We know she must have said terrible things to Lee as she says so herself. She surely said some such things to friends and imagine how they could escalate into myths. And even if she didn't speak to anyone, imagine if you were a parent of a child of any of Lee's kids' ages at that time, what you might think about the event. Imagine what could build up. But Lee was out of there pretty fast it seemed to me from the film, so while he will have encountered some residents of Manchester when there in subsequent years, I don't think he will have done much. It seemed to me like he'd only been back there when he absolutely had to and I am going to suggest he spend as little as possible time there in any public place. Hence everyone's shock to hear him do so small a thing as for example phone the school. Usually he'd just be at the hospital or at Joe's I'd think...?? So I am not sure he's really experienced so much of what you say. Though I am sure he imagines it as you say.
There are people in Manchester by the Sea who clearly hate Lee and think of him as having murdered his children. And there are people who have great empathy and pity for him. And I don't think it is only those who knew him who have empathy. Certainly, Lee's search for work in Manchester is telling though.
I am certain your point has much truth to it, but I don't think it is so thought out as this for Lee myself. He doesn't seem to have spent a lot of time back in Manchester to have people confronting him about those events, though clearly people do stare (I noticed even at Joe's wake, some people there were staring warily at him.) But I don't think that'd make him angry. Because Lee holds himself responsible. I think he'd think folks had every right to judge him. His anger is at the world, his children's fate and his own fate I think more than directly at any people. This is why he tries desperately hard not to hurt anyone he was already close to and I think why he tries even harder to stay completely away from even the vaguest connection with any new human being.
I think it's just a wild rage in his soul and he has no other way to get it out. Hmmm.. But I dunno. I'm probably talking rubbish and you it's just what you said, haha. Oh well.
It's pretty simple, storywise, in regards to his behavior. The first time introduces us to the idea that maybe he's a hothead. Then later, after the police interview, we see that he's not a hothead, he's more like suicidal. Then, after talking to his ex-wife and she dredges up the past, he gets into the last fight which is supposed to be point the audience puts it all together that he gets into these fights to punish himself for the past. Three fights. The first two with seemingly disparate motivations, and the third reveals the true motivation.
Casey Affleck was a belligerent hothead and needed very little to set him off. Not much more to it than that, no gay sub-text. If there really was any kind of sub-text Casey would have been taking advantage of the women who kept throwing themselves at him throughout the film.
shareHow he taking advantage of the women? Refuse them or even be rude is not taking advantage. And actually the first two lady (not the old lady) are very rude to him.
Funny after watching that scene i too, thought they were a gay couple. But after reading the responses i was wrong. tragedy in a Small town=whispers and tension
shareLet's start with the evidences:
First, there are several indications that this is not a date or a gay couple. We start with the way they talk with each other, there's no sign of flirtation or too much closeness between them.
Second, they wear business suit. The suits imply that this's a two businesses partners who go to drink after work.
Third, the most obvious, they called in the credit Businessman 1 and 2 at Bar.
Fourth, it does not prove of course that Lee didn't thought they gays. But I think it makes more sense to assess, in the context of the plot, that Lee thought, under the influence of alcohol, they know him from his former life, it's make sense because he ask them "do you know me?".
The tragedy of Lee loss, except the obvious, is the constant feeling that people looking at him as guilty and blame him for the loss of his children - like his ex-wife tell him "My heart is broken.. and I know your heart is broken too but I don't have to carry". In other words, there's no evidence at all that this homophobic accident.