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ecarle's Replies
It would be good to know the time frame of those Norman-Arbo encounters.
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In terms of the movie as we have it, it is in that great period in the day "from dusk til nightfall." (NOT from dusk til dawn.)
Hitchcock had, the year before, used EXACTLY this same time of day for the scene at the Glen Cove mansion where Roger first meets Vandamm and Company. Indeed, Vandamm has to turn on the lights to illuminate the room as darkness falls.
The scene is lit for sunlight when Arbogast first meets Norman on the porch after driving up(though this scene was filmed on a Bates Motel soundstage set -- there are TWO Bates Motels in the movie, one outdoors on the back lot and this one for dialogue.)
In the office, "the brilliance commences." Hitchcock slowly lowers the lighting and slowly darkens the office, until Arbogast's face is half-in-light/half-in-dark and Norman is a lit face in the dark. The coming of darkness TRIGGERS Norman's action "The light. The sign." He turns on the light because its dark. Arbogast traps him immediately ("And that's exactly my point.")
When the two men go back out on the porch, it is nighttime...and nighttime is no time to be at the Bates Motel. Marion got killed at night. And Mother could be out there in the darkness ...
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It's December, and I don't know about daylight savings time in the western states, nor the time of day Arbo arrives at the Bates motel. It doesn't feel like December to me, but then this is California.
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Well, here famously, we have Psycho starting a week earlier on "Friday, December 11." Arbogast is questioning Norman on Saturday December 19. When Arbogast dies, there is a fade in to Sam saying: "Sometimes Saturday Night has a lonely sound."
The famous part: Hitchcock had the "December 11" date slapped on the opening scene of Psycho because the second unit shot the Phoenix footage in November 1959..and Xmas decorations were/are visible on Phoenix streets.
The script places Psycho in "late summer" which is why Cassidy says "Hot as fresh milk!"
No matter to Hitchcock. Or as he would say "its only a movie." Or..."don't be droll." Hitchcock was more willing to convert a summer story into a Christmas tale(with no mention of Xmas in the movie) than to spend money on a Phoenix reshoot.
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Maybe this is part of the genius of Psycho,--that it takes the viewer out of normal time and space as we know it, making the viewer aware that it is indeed a movie--which puts the scenes in another place entirely: like real life, but not real life.
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Exactly, I'd say.
I was watching this week the 2016 Oscar nominated movie "Manchester by the Sea" and it occurred to me how this kind of movie "looks just like real life" - the rooms, the talk, the human interaction -- in a way that drains the "movie-ness" out of the movie. "Manchester" is just as much of a fiction as "Psycho," but Hitchocck liked to create reality within a heightened sense OF reality. Or as Hitchcock said, "Other people's films are a slice of life. Mine are a slice of cake."
I'm not ecarle but that book is a classic. Internet tells me it was published in 2004. Its companion is Who The Devil Made it (1997) which is focused on directors.
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All correct. The first book was interviews with directors(including Hitchcock) , the second book was a mix of interviews(when Bogdanovich could interview them) or just articles about them(as with Marilyn Monroe.)
In the directors interview book, Bogdo got this incisive quote from Hitchocck about Anthony Perkins and Martin Balsam on Psycho:
Bogdanovich: I heard from Anthony Perkins that it was his idea to eat the candy corn, and that you encouraged him always to come up with things.
Hitchcock: Yes. And Martin Balsam , too. I said "Fellows, you have a lot to do together in this scene. Now why don't you both go in a corner and have a go? After all, there are limits. You can't direct good actors in a scene that should come naturally -- hesitancies and so on. No, people like Tony and Balsam are intelligent men and you leave them to it."
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I note that Hitchcock says "people like Tony and Balsam are intelligent men." "Tony" was a star, and a friend. "Balsam" was a character actor, and likely not a friend. BUT Hitchcock singled Balsam out for praise, pretty rare for Hitchcock. And in 1962, Hitchocock flew Martin Balsam out from New York to Hollywood to do the screen test dialogues with Tippi Hedren.
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Bogdanovich lifted Hitchcock quotes from "Who the Devil Made It?"(an old Howard Hawks quote) and put them into his Anthony Perkins artile in "Who the Hell's In It?"
and then Bogdo wrote this about the Arbogast/Norman scene:
"(The Perkins/Balsam contributions) translates to mean that the totally real, seemingly spontaneous, absolutely perfect interaction between the two actors came out of those rehearsals together and that Hitchcock just shot it -- from all the correct angles."
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A 2004 publication date strikes me as a bit before our discussions on imdb, but I'm not sure. In any event, "great minds think alike."
PS. The fascinating interview in "Who the Hell's In it?" is with Jerry Lewis. It goes on and on and on. A near-broke Bogdanovich and his first wife rather "attached themselves" to Lewis when they first came to LA and Bogdo wrote movie magazine profiles. Jerry gave them one of his cars and privileges to watch the Paramount library at the studio(which was revoked by the studio for overuse.) In exchange, Bogdo did this long interview with Lewis and made sure to salute a man who, while notoriously tempermental and mean 'in his prime" had still been nice to Bogdo and towards whom Bogdo felt loyalty.
Thank you...I am a major fan of "Psycho" who has become a somewhat grudging fan of "Bates Motel."
The new series really went off the track in Seasons 1-4 with its characters from the original, but I am proud that "Psycho" could generate a five-season TV series over 50 years later, and I understand that a new kind of story needs to be told for a new generation. Quite frankly, the showrunners aren't making "Bates Motel" for my generation, I don't think. I wish "Bates Motel" great success and good ratings.
But now that the story is in "Psycho territory" I may become more of a fan...even if they radically change the story from Hitchcock's version. They already have, what with the different Loomis Hardware characters and a younger Mrs. Bates as the killer(less scary, I'd say , than an incongruously superstrong old lady.)
Anyway, this might become a thread on Season Five. I'm going to try to watch all episodes.
The next sequence, all the way up the curving staircase to Rusk's room, his opening the door to let Babs in ahead of him, his final line "I don't know if you know this, Babs, but you're my..type...of woman"(exactly what he said to Brenda Blaney before killing HER; another Hitchcock rhyme) and then the famous retreat of the camera backwards down the stairs and out into the Covent Garden marketplace that now fills with sound...is the famous "Farewell to Babs" shot.
That's a great shot, with great meaning, but I will contend that there are a great many other great Hitchcock touches before it happens, from the soundtrack cutting down on "Got a place to stay?" to the walk and talk through the colorful fruit warehouse, to Rusk's advice about quitting a job being a blessing in disguise and how Babs should travel(its funny, I KNOW he's going to kill her, but I find myself imagining Babs travelling) and how Rusk's line about "your whole life ahead of you" is his own sadistic little in-joke, as well as a way of making sure Babs is "thinking past the present" to a future he is about to end.
Its classic Hitchcock, its adult in its execution and yes -- I think it is better than a lot of the script in The Birds.
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One more thing:
Everybody was supposedly taken by surprise when Janet Leigh gets killed in Psycho.
I'd say Hitchcock pulled off as much of a big surprise when Anna Massey gets killed in Frenzy.
For we'd thought that that the "Janet Leigh" of Frenzy was Barbara Leigh-Hunt(Brenda Blaney) the "big victim of the film." Anna Massey, had, we thought, the Vera Miles part in Psycho(Lila Crane) or the Ruth Roman part in Strangers on a Train(Anne Morton) the "female lead" after a victim is killed early on(Marion in Psycho; Miriam in Strangers.)
Anna Massey as Babs DOES have the heroine part in Frenzy, and it is part of our shock and disbelief to slowly realize that Rusk is GOING TO KILL HER TOO. In other words, it is the SECOND murder in Frenzy that is the big surprise.
Hitchcock never quit surprising us....
Hi, ec!
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Hi, back atcha, doghouse!
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Been nosing around here for the last week or so and just wanted to say hello.
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Glad you did!
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Still getting the lay of the land in these parts, as well as on https://www.themoviedb.org/ and http://imdb2.freeforums.net/. Each offers its own advantages, and I was especially pleased to note the email notification feature here, upon which I depended greatly at imdb.
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Yes, I didn't get those at imdb and I'm getting them now...helps me get into the sites, too.
Though I'm finding navigation a little "tough." Harder to post sometimes, etc. Oh, well...I'll get the hang of it.
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Many's the time I'd get a reply to posts from months or even years earlier, and about many of which I'd forgotten
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That was me, all the time -- and it may yet be at boards where I don't get such reminders.
It used to be at imdb that I would decide to go "roaming" some movie boards I hadn't been to in months...years!...and d'oh...there was somebody answering me from months/years ago. Sometimes I'd answer "just to make a record" but they were long gone. Served me right. I trust no one thought I was being rude...just didn't check up.
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Some boards apparently had just enough sporadic activity to keep them active, that is to say without any automatic deletion of older threads either by being crowded out by newer activity or the opposite extreme of becoming moribund.
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I could never figure that out. On some boards, my posts/threads stayed for years. Others...gone in months. And not just on popular boards.
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I had a reply only last November to a thread I'd started on The Palm Beach Story just shy of 10 years earlier! Talk about a "dangling conversation."
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Yep...amazing, that world.
I would be amazed to find that posts I thought I'd made " a couple of years ago" turned out to be 8 years ago or something. Time is swift and merciless!
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I'm grateful as well to the enterprising and ambitious user who was able to archive so many imdb threads on this site. Of course I've forgotten now who it was, so I can't single them out for the credit they deserve.
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our friend swanstep is at least one of them, and the person who runs this joint -- "Jim" -- is, I think, the mastermind. As always, "if I have left someone out," I am sorry.
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Just the same, I have the "fish out of water" feeling I got when when a brand new junior high school was built closer to my home and I was transferred there after a year at another. Although surrounded by many of the same faces, everything else was unfamiliar and I reverted somewhat to the "new kid" uncertainty I'd had entering the other school a year before.
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Great analogy. I would refine it to moving up to a high school that feeds from several junior highs. I did that, and found myself with a clique of the junior high "old friends," but needing to get to know the new people...whom I couldn't CALL friends unless and until I earned it. "Here's hoping."
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But now as then, I guess most of us are "new kids" here.
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Yes, even with each other, again.
I will likely be saying the same things I've said about Psycho "one more time" to the new acquaintances. Just making a record.
But there's always something NEW to say about Psycho...and a final season five of Bates Motel on the air that is definitely taking on the Hitchcock version directly after four years in which that was an intermittent thing. I'll probably start/join posts on that. It will be "new."
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Anywho, thought I'd touch base after having lurked for a bit.
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Very glad that you did, doghouse!
I'm not sure. Seems to be a post designed to get a rise out of us...was last time, too.
I'm not inclined to get in any trouble with any other posters this early in the "save" that is this board.
I think the post is FINE...just fine.
How heartening to hear from everyone here.
Life gives us roadblocks which we can surmount...
Telegonus, it IS a great site, you are a great friend...and it is a great scene, in a movie filled with them. But I think what I like about the Norman/Arbogast sequence is that it went "unsung" for many years given the bigger scenes in the movie...and it is as precise, masterly and intelligent as any other part of the film.
I will add that former director/current film critic Peter Bogdanovich wrote a chapter on Anthony Perkins in a book called "Who the Hell Is in It?" and he singled out the Arbogast/Norman interrogation(with a photo from it) as an unsung great scene in film history.
So maybe its not so unsung after all?
Welcome, everyone!
Its pretty cool, isn't it?
I think we have swanstep to thank!
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Yes, I have been to the lobby of the UN and Hitchcock's version(a mix of in-studio art direction and matte painting) was more impressive.
Keep in mind that Hitchcock told Truffaut he entirely invented "the public lounge" where Townsend is knifed. Hitch said he had to make that up in order to create a room "where the man with the knife could just walk in."
I remember this OP from imdb.
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BTW, the classic and almost Hitchcockian QT dialogue in "Death Proof" comes when Kurt's Stuntman Mike...having finally lured Rose MacGowan into his Death Proof car to "drive her home," edges to the street from the parking lot and this is said:
Kurt: Which way you need us to go? Left or right?
Rose: (Cutely) Right!
Kurt: Well..well, that's too bad. Because you had a 50/50 chance of going left or right. And we're both goin' left. Now, if you'd been going left, too, it would have been some time before you would be scared. But since you were goin' right, and we're goin' left, I'm afraid you're gonna have to be scared...(grim face and voice)...IMMEDIATELY.
Whereupon Kurt races the car onto the street and begins his "slam murder" of MacGowan. That exchange up there above is probably THE classic QT exchange in this movie..and very much his great "horror dialogue" in his canon so far.
THAT said, it is much earlier in Part One of "Death Proof" -- at the bar of a TexMex dive with QT as the bartender, that a handsome macho Kurt(albeit with a big scar down his face) and a blonde, sexy perky MacGowan exchange all sorts of flirty dialogue at "maximum top levels" of line delivery. I just LOVE watching good actors act at a level where one laughs and smiles just to hear them say the lines and just to look at them say them. Indeed, I'll say that any/every scene with Kurt Russell interacting with Rose MacGowen is "pure four star entertainment" in Death Proof.
(FINAL) "The Grindhouse Experiment"
Its funny about the QT career. Jackie Brown in 1997 is the last "purely stand alone" feature in QT's canon before "Inglorious Basterds" a full 12 years later in 2009.
In the 12 years in between, QT took a full six of them OFF -- amazing when you think about it.
Then, he gave us a movie in two parts: "Kill Bill 1" (2003) and "Kill Bill 2"(2004).
Then he gave us "half a movie OF two parts": "Death Proof" as the second feature after "Planet Terror" in "Grindhouse"(2007." Worse yet, "Death Proof" divides INTO two parts.
The "Grindhouse" experiment was for QT and his best buddy Robert Rodriguez to "re-create" the crumminess of grindhouse exploitation films by PURPOSELY stomping the film stock until it was filled with hair-like lines, tears, reel breaks, soundtrack jumps...just total garbage to look at and listen to. As a technical matter. The actual acting and writing and staging was Grade-A.
Moreover, the "Grindhouse" double-bill came complete with some fake trailers and even a very funny "commercial" for "Acuna Boys Mexican Food.' Not to mention absolutely tear-inducing nostalgia bumpers with such phrases as "Coming Soon," "Also" and my favorite "Get MORE out of Life...Go TO a Movie!"
That the "sweet nostalgia" of the bumpers was raped by the atrocities portrayed in the fake Grindhouse trailers was..part of the weird, sick "X-rated" charm of Grindhouse.
The trailers included "Machete"(which actually became a movie and then a sequel), "Nazi Werewolf Women of the SS," "Don't!"(quite witty, by Simon Pegg: "Don't! Go in the house!" "Don't Go..Up the Stairs!" "Don't! Go in the basement(why, that's Psycho right there) and "If you are thinking about going to this movie alone...Don't!")
...and "Eli Roth's Thanksgiving," a "Halloween ripoff" which just might make you vomit in your mouth a little bit. (Roth appears in "Death Proof" and I think he was a bad influence on QT, gore-wise.)
Intriguing: QT is willing to shoot most of Part One of Death Proof with all the soundtrack glitches, rips and tears of "the Grindhouse experiment"(including a great bit where a lap dance scene disappears with a "reel missing" explanation -- the projectionist took it for private arousal) -- BUT: once Part Two of Death Proof gets going, the images are clean and clear and professional. In short, QT would only go with the joke so far. (Note in passing: the big car chase at the end rather reminds me of an old B 70's movie called "Stunts" with QT favorite Robert Forster in the lead.)
Though I am now happily caught up again with Death Proof(and liking it a lot more than in 2007), I think I will leave "Planet Terror" back there. It was, as I recall, just too dumb and gross to enjoy..with QT enacting a character who, uh, male member becomes something gross and gooey to attack people with.
QT is in Deathproof too, offering this memorable exchange with Rose MacGowan:
Rose: Who is this guy?
QT: Stuntman Mike.
Rose: What does he do?
QT: He's a stuntman.
Ha.
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For a last "this isn't THAT OT" connection between Grindhouse/Death Proof and Psycho, I would opine that both films have A-list directors having fun with the promotional tropes of the exploitation market. QT went for the 70's grindhouse genre, but Hitchcock went for the William Castle 50's exploitation, right down to his trailer and the "no one admitted after Psycho begins" promotion. With both movies, the audience is invited to enjoy the tacky presentational aspects along with some great filmmaking, dialogue, and acting.
PS. I realize now that I have NOT seen all of QT's work. I need to get to see that other 27 minutes of Death Proof, which includes "the missing lap dance scene" and more great dialogue for the Great Kurt Russell(of whom QT lists my favorite movie of 1980 -- Used Cars -- as one of Kurt's best roles! Yay! But also: Elvis, Escape from New York, The Thing, Silkwood, Tequila Sunrise, Poseidon, and of course, The Hateful Eight.)
I am on my way to find those 27 minutes.
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Though it is not quite this "pure," it can be said that Part One of Death Proof is the more "usual" QT: a whole lotta talk, a lot of which is very fun to listen to and brilliant in the conception -- as when Kurt Russell uses a full-on John Wayne impression to say that when he says "In my book, you're OK" HE ACTUALLY HAS A BOOK.
And then Part Two has that incredible stunt driving sequence -- anchored not by the cars moving so fast and crashing into each other so much as by the INCREDIBLE stuntwork of New Zealand stuntwoman Zoe Bell hanging onto the hood of a car by two -- and then only one -- strapped on belts as it moves at top speed. However "really secure" Bell was with those straps, that car is MOVING -- and its clear she could have been hurt or killed had the car crashed.
But there's also a lot of talk(again, among young women) in Part Two...and Part One climaxes with the "horror action" of Stuntman Mike's first on-screen killings -- one woman IN his "Death Proof" car as a passenger, and then four women "in one blow" when he hits their car with his "Death Proof" car. The carnage is gory and grim, but the excitement is palpable -- the four women in the other car die as they reach the Karoke climax to a sing-a-long to some catchy, obscure rock song on the radio.
About that "Death Proof" car: I figure that QT had learned about such "movie cars" and hatched his horror idea accordingly. A "Death Proof" car is one that is so heavily rigged and protected that the stunt driver can survive, with moderate injury only, a crash into ANYTHING ("I can drive 125 miles straight into a brick wall," Kurt brags.)
Thus can Stuntman Mike drive head-on into the car with four women and kill them while sustaining minor injuries, but also -- Stuntman Mike kills a female passenger whose seat has been rigged with NO protection. As Stuntman Mike says to her:
"I told you this car is Death Proof, and it is. Its 100% Death Proof. However, to get the full benefit, honey...you really have to be sitting in MY seat."
Whereupon he swerves, brakes and steers the car to make sure that the passenger(Rose MacGowan) is slammed against every steel wall of the passenger side until she is dead, her neck broken and her face a bloody mass.
The "violence against women" in "Death Proof" is acute and disturbing. We are in Frenzy territory here, there are no male victims as in Psycho -- and Michael Parks as the same sheriff he played in "KIll Bill" here notes that he believes Stuntman Mike gets off sexually only DURING the killings(ala Bob Rusk in Frenzy.)
But just when you think that QT is a woman-hating sadist himself, he offers a "flip the tables" finale in which the SECOND set of potential female victims -- which includes two tough stunt ladies -- pursue a sniveling, whining, crybaby Stuntman Mike all over creation in their car...and then pull him out of his crashed car for a final "fatal beatdown" that should have feminists applauding everywhere. (The physicality of how the ladies beat Kurt to death reminded me of " Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill.")
That beatdown, coupled with the incredible car chases, coupled with the ultra-gore of Russell's first murders (the car crashes in Part One) coupled with... a LOT(if hardly all) of QT's trademark curlicue dialogue...makes "Death Proof" memorable enough. I liked it a lot this time around.
IMDb's Psycho board had many nominally OT (Off-Topic) threads. These were controversial: a few people really resented their presence. So... I'm testing the waters here.
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Well, we shall see. I bow to authority on these matters, but I think what we did there was to use Psycho as a "jumping off point" for some er, "mature" people to discuss OT topics without risking the flaming and trolling of boards where the younger blood hangs out.
One reason I liked using "Psycho" AS the jumping off point was that I felt a category like "General Film" or "Classic Film" was a bit too broad to just put any old movie in there. With "Psycho" as the spine -- "every movie made after it has a bit of Psycho in it," said one wag-- we could gather discussions of both old AND new movies in one place.
And I always made sure to do one "pure Psycho" post before doing an OT.
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It strikes me as an inherent "marker of Oscar's wrongness" that Mr. Chazelle, however deserving, will win a Best Director Oscar that eluded Hitchocck and Kubrick and Altman and Hawks and Aldrich and Lynch and Tarantino and...Welles and hell, for that matter Preminger and Frankenheimer and Siegel.
Its as if Oscar ended up being a repository for too many "functional middlebrow" director wins...oftimes directors who wouldn't win again or even direct much again(John Avildsen and Franklin Shaffer come to mind). And oftimes, directors winning for the WRONG film (i.e. Scorsese for The Departed, which would have been what would have happened if Hitchcock won for Frenzy, for which he wasn't even nominated anyway.)
Indeed. It'll be interesting to see the consequences of IMDb shutting down their massive and long-running boards. They don't know what their decision has set loose into the world.
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I suppose they will have ways of checking if traffic declines in some significant way. I still go there to check stats...but its not anyplace I feel like to going to on a regular basis. Still...its a GREAT place for stats.
My feeling is: management didn't realize how much, within the many boards they had, people had made a commitment to come there and to be there. Its like we were the well-behaving guests at a party and we ALL got thrown out, along with the unruly ones. It felt unfair.
But nature abhors a vacuum and here we are.
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By the way, we recently got the option to be notified by e-mail of replies we get here. If you haven't and would like to, you can add your e-mail address through your profile. It's helpful for those who are using multiple sites.
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I will look into that. Thank you.
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Hope you're well and see you on the boards again. :)
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I am , and you will. I look forward to reading your posts as well. Come on out and say something from time to time! "We don't bite."
I'm sure some version is coming...
...but how great to see what swanstep has done already in "picking up and moving" those other Hitchcock boards.
I looked at the NXNW and Frenzy boards...and it was like going home again.
Many thanks!
I think that was a mock-up painting of the UN Building from above.
Likely a camera was put very high up on a very high crane to shoot down on "Thornhill" running(likely not Cary Grant himself; its a speck) simply across some concrete to a waiting cab, and then that footage was matted into the painting of the UN Building "looking down."
At least, that's what I think.
Stewart was evidently very interested in getting the role, but Hitchcock instinctively felt it wasn't a good fit.
Hitchcock would evidently at some point "blame" Stewart's aging appearance for the box office middling results of Vertigo(I somewhat agree, but it was the story that turned mass audiences off.) And in "Bell Book and Candle" of 1958, Stewart seemed too old for what was essentially a Cary Grant part, anyway(even if Grant was OLDER than Stewart.)
Personally, I think that James Stewart would have spoiled the crop duster scene because whereas Cary Grant in a suit looked oddly out of place on the open prairie...Western Star James Stewart would have looked just fine there.
Had Grant said "no" to North by Northwest(and he tried to get out of it), I could see Roger Thornhill more effectively played by William Holden or Rock Hudson before I would have gone to Stewart.
Funny: in the film "Dallas Buyers Club," the Matthew McConaghey character, in noting Rock Hudson's death from AIDS, has this exchange with another man:
Other man: Who's Rock Hudson?
MM: A movie star. Haven't you seen North by Northwest?
So...there's my case made for me.
Well, thank you for that, 9.
It is heartening to see some of the names I used to see at imdb -- but also good to be "meeting" some new posters.
I'm reminded of a line by another Psycho -- Bob Rusk -- in Frenzy:
"Quitting a job can be a blessing in disguise. It gets you out of a rut."
We didn't "quit" imdb. It quit us. But we seem to have gotten out of a rut, and perhaps this "brave new world" of new sites will allow for a broadening of our world and the people we get to know.. albeit only on "the net."
Now I can get in both places...and a third.
I intend to travel among the three. I am grateful to everyone who helped set up and direct us to the three.
OT: Manchester By the Sea (SPOILERS)
Well, swanstep, any ideas on how and where an OT post might be placed? I will place this one here. Perhaps it will be deleted by an administrator; perhaps I can/should move it to somewhere more appropriate. But here goes.
My watching's of 2016's Oscar films remains paltry. For all my protestations that "these are films that nobody sees," I AM seeing them, now, so I guess no movie is unseen once I see it!
I ordered Manchester by the Sea off of Pay-Per-View and watched it on TV, which, frankly, is how I've seen a few Oscar films these past years (I saw The Hurt Locker that way the day before it won Best Picture.) It doesn't really feel right -- begging the question of our time: what is a movie and what is TV? Should the Oscars and the Emmy's merge?
Meanwhle: on Manchester by the Sea: in a word: No.
I found the film almost parodistic in how it piled on the misery, giving us TWO "ultimate family loss" stories and presenting them in a manner where they sort of cancelled each other out. It was just too much pain, too much angst, too much anger.
There is a theme, there, to be sure: families are fragile units, and the loss of any family members "too soon"(children, breadwinners) can wreak devestation on everyone. I suppose only the deaths of elderly people who have no parents and no longer support children are the only deaths that CAN be handled without economic and social devastation, come to think of it. Committing to a marriage, a family, children, creates a unit that becomes harrowingly reliant upon its members -- lose the parents, lose the children...everything falls apart.
I'm very sympathetic to this harrowing theme, but I didn't think "Manchester by the Sea" played out very engagingly. Or maybe I just don't want this in my movies anymore. Perhaps the closest Hitchcock came to this kind of real bleakness was The Wrong Man, but that one pulled out at the end and was dynamite cinema getting there.
Manchester by the Sea also seemed to give us a set of characters who were often yelling and cussing at each other, understandably so in most cases, but not very engagingly(and yet, the story also posits some "good, nice" entirely sympathetic side characters who , ultimately, save the day in their own quiet way.)
Casey Affleck certainly has an arresting quality. He is much more slight and nervy of build and manner than his strapping brother Ben...but equally tough when necessary. I was reminded here of his work in another " Boston movie"(directed by Ben): Gone Baby Gone, in which Affleck played a private eye who seems ridiculuously too small for the fighting part of the work...but isn't.
I understand that it is down to Denzel and Casey for Best Actor. This could be the winner but...I dunno.
I am not a big fan of the score of this movie. The music is "sad" but it seemed pretentiously so, edging towards twee classical tones while undercutting its emotional story.
I feel that where I end up personally with Manchester by the Sea is this: its just not good enough for Oscar. 30 years ago, this film would not have been an Oscar finalist; it is simply one of a handful of 2016 movies that had much seriousness of purpose at all. So it got the nominations.
On the other hand, perhaps I simply shouldn't be participating in the watching of movies like this. I'm a North by Northwest man at heart; these simple realistic dramas are not what I go to the movies to see -- unless they are The Wrong Man.
PS. It does have a great scene: the meeting of Affleck and Michelle Williams near the end. Sometimes one scene is what Oscar wants saved for posterity.