Kenneth Lonergan’s Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay Academy Award nominated Manchester by the Sea is the most compelling screenplay I’ve come across lately. I deeply enjoyed breaking it down to its parts to better understand how it was so effectively and economically put together.

This breakdown is based on Blake Snyder’s beat sheet method. Please read on if you’ve already seen the movie! Enjoy!

Opening Image
Three boys in one beloved boat, on one beloved ocean. Lee (Casey Affleck) kids around with his nephew Patrick as his big brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) helms the boat. They are connected through the ocean and their love for each other.

Set-up
Lee works as a janitor, servicing the residents of four apartment buildings. His character is set up by its contrast to the people whose lives continue uninterrupted despite his presence in them. The residents have relatives, responsibilities, plans, schedules, worries, and preferences, whereas Lee is a blank page, as if without a past and a future, a socially inept bypasser, there to unclog and repair and nothing more. Lee is portrayed as someone who has picked a life of doing the dirty work of lives lived by others – a man outside of the rhythmic continuity of other people’s lives.

Lee has a temper, cause of which is yet unclear. When he is pushed or when he is alone, he stumbles into trouble. He cannot connect with people, except when he quenches his thirst for connection by needless violent outbursts.

When Lee heads back into Manchester following the Catalyst (see below) his past is slowly revealed, establishing what the ramifications of this ‘catalyst for action’ might mean for Lee, what’s at stake and what he must overcome to meet his challenge.

Theme Stated
Following Lee’s unexpected indiscretion with one of the residents, his boss has a chat with him. He tells Lee that he can’t be so careless and unpleasant in life, implying that Lee simply doesn’t fit in a civilized world. This first challenge to Lee’s deep-seated attitude towards life shows us that we’re about to explore whether Lee will be able to re-enter the social, connected world. Will he make an effort to get along? Will he make room for others?

Catalyst
Lee gets a call from the hospital: Joe had another heart attack. He drives back to Manchester as he did so many times before, but this time Joe is dead. Manchester is calling for Lee to tend to Patrick and, in doing so, to pick up the pieces of his own life.

Debate
According to Joe’s will, Lee is to become Patrick’s (Lucas Hedges) legal guardian and look after him until he turns 18. So the central debate question is, ‘Will Lee accept the duty of being a guardian to Patrick?’ But, since Patrick has a lot to lose by leaving Manchester to live with Lee and Lee has no real excuse to stay in Boston, the real question is ‘Will Lee move back to Manchester?’ When Lee is hit with this question in the lawyer’s office, his tragic past is revealed to intensify what this move might mean for him. How near impossible a task is being asked of him. In light of his personal past, the guilt he feels for what happened to his family, will he be able to stomach living in Manchester again, let alone take responsibility for another person?

Break into Two
Lee doesn’t see sending Patrick to live with his mother as an option. So he decides to temporarily move to Manchester until he figures something out and move them both to Boston. But even before a clear moment of decision occurs, Manchester has already sucked Lee in. He is already engaged in the daily tasks, responsibilities and decisions for Patrick’s life; he has already assumed a parental position.

Fun & Games
Lee and Patrick’s life together. Patrick’s daily schedule, friends, girlfriends, school, sports teams, music band, his boat, his problems come at Lee with full force. Lee’s dull and subdued personality, and unwillingness to function as a giver of guidance, support and discipline, starkly contrasts Patrick’s ease in his social connections, and outspokenness about his desires, fears and goals. Lee’s callousness vs. Patrick’s liveliness provides an entertaining respite from the grief they are yet to process.

B Story
Despite their differences and the inconvenient circumstances they are brought together in, Lee and Patrick bond. Patrick is social, popular, pumped up with hormones and desires, love, humor and gusto. He is at the center of a web of connections, bubbling with life. He is the antithesis to Lee’s disconnected, unwilling, dispassioned shuffle through life. Their evolving connection becomes a point by which the theme of the film is discussed: will Lee integrate back into society with the help of his new role as a guardian to Patrick?

Midpoint
Patrick has an emotional breakdown – a rare occasion where he abandons his carefree attitude and falls into the claws of grief over his dad. When Patrick is confronted with stacks of frozen chicken and a sudden onslaught of grief overwhelms him, Lee does his work as a compassionate, loving guardian. This is a moment when we feel the transference of their shared suffering. We ask: could Patrick be the antidote to Lee’s deep feelings of guilt and sorrow?

Bad Guys Close in
Lee lays down what will happen to Patrick: temporary stay in Manchester and then move to Boston. Patrick is cross with Lee; the tension between them builds. On the other hand the boat is in bad shape and will require either selling or investing in, both of which don’t quite work for either of them. More pressure is introduced when Lee looks for jobs in Manchester but it’s clear the townsfolk still holds some grudge against him. Furthermore, despite Patrick’s hopeful attempt, Lee proves to be less than capable of making even small talk with another person.

A big blow comes when Patrick’s –and Lee’s– last hope for finding Patrick an appropriate guardian falls through. Patrick’s mum and her fiancé are clearly not the right match for him. Finally, it’s obvious that Lee and Patrick are stuck together. To counteract this disappointment, Lee finds a way for them to keep the boat and gives Patrick a break to enjoy his girlfriend – two sweet gestures that ease the tension between them. But soon Lee will encounter the biggest challenge of all…

All is Lost
Lee runs into his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams) pushing a stroller down a Manchester street. Randi’s confessional apology has a shattering effect; the love and pain between them are palpable. Lee is crushed under the weight of Randi’s compassion and the knowledge that it is too late to mend their unsalvageable, grief-stricken relationship.

Dark Night of the Soul
Lee’s self-destructive defense mechanism takes effect immediately. He starts a bar fight and gets damaged enough to prove to himself that’s exactly what he deserves. What’s more, in a heart-wrenching moment, he sees his dead children warning him of a fire he’s about to cause. Lee’s jolted out of his stupor to tend to the spaghetti sauce burning on the stove. This classic Dark Night of the Soul moment underlines the haunting nature of Lee’s grief.

Break into Three
Lee does the only thing that he can do under the circumstances. He arranges Joe’s best friend to adopt Patrick. He tells Patrick that he simply cannot stay in Manchester, because he’s too heartbroken, because he can’t beat his demons.

Finale
Joe is finally buried on a spring day. Lee has a job in the big city and is looking for a bigger place to live. When asked why that is, he explains the extra room is for Patrick to come visit. Lee and Patrick bounce a ball between them as they continue to bicker. Regardless of how happy or unhappy they are now, it is clear that Patrick continues to live the life he chooses to live, and Lee has picked a safe zone for himself to function and made room for another person.

Final Image
Lee and Patrick are out fishing on their boat – the only common ground quiet and gentle enough to hold the connection between them.

A field suggests possibilities; its openness welcomes any old soul to seek his treasure; its terrain allows all sorts of physical or spiritual pursuits. The title, A Field in England, immediately brings to mind a vivid image, and gives away a carefree attitude about which field is the one in question, and what happens on it. The obscurity and infinite possibilities of the film’s narrative and style are hinted at first in the title.

Director Ben Wheatley and screenwriter Amy Jump’s field is a simple field adjacent to a battlefield. Theirs is one of possibilities for personal battles, discoveries, treasures, friendship and mind-altering mushrooms. Unsurprisingly, A Field in England cannot be contained in a single genre category, confined by one aesthetic style or another, or limited by the use of a distinct narrative device or two. It mishmashes a number of devices and forms, as well as lenses, sound effects, visual effects and music.

It is recognized as a historical psychological thriller, and while it has elements of all of these genres (and more), it also defies their conventions and expectations. Though clearly set in another century, we are not informed of its 17th century setting, as this information is not altogether relevant. The costumes and dialogues are perfectly naturalistic to the period, hence giving the film an air of realism, and yet it makes no effort to reveal its historic background and the culture in which the story takes place.

The film is more interested in the simple crevices of its four main characters’ psyches, but only as they succumb to the influence of the mushrooms they eat. Mostly, their goals and conflicts with each other are in plain sight, rather than obscured by some psychological dramatization.

As for the thriller/horror aspect, even though there is some gore involved in this classic tale of battle against evil, and unsettling events involving a skull, a smoky black sphere, and blood-curdling sounds of a witchcraft session do occur, these details are as humorous as they are disturbing.

A Field in England is more accurately an unexpected cross between (1) a British take on a classic Western in which hats, pistols, camaraderie and male bravado are the order of the day, with a characteristically British field taking the place of mountains and deserts, (2) a road movie, which has a singular goal, though it does shift from reaching an alehouse, to recovering some documents of alchemy, to finding a treasure, to outwitting the villain to save oneself, and (3) an allegorical comedy on the effects of mushroom circles, ruminations on occult mysticism and forming unlikely friendships along the way.

The shifts in genre are accompanied beautifully by the episodic changes in camerawork, editing, sound and music. The first quarter of the film is devoted to the chaotic impact of war on the bodily senses. The camera captures macro images of eyes, juxtaposed with frantic images of grass and weeds. Soon these settle into a rhythm of longer, calmer shots showing the characters getting to know one another. Tabloid images of the men uniquely invoke paintings in which characters theatrically enact a period we can no longer experience or even imagine. As we are plunged into the fake reality of this time, music remains more instrumental and sound design more realistic.

Once the mushrooms are introduced, there is a literal reenactment of the idea that it may take four men and a rope to pull one out of a mushroom circle. The fast-paced, cartoonish editing of this scene naturally gives birth to the warped images of the characters as they go deeper and deeper into their nightmarish, violently psychedelic state. Strobe effect, split screens where images fold and shift around, fast cuts between two simultaneous events that speedily convey information to the audience are a few of the radical methods Wheatley mixes together.

The relentless wind, the unnaturally quiet, echoing voices, increasingly electronic tones in the music, and the narrative genius of a reappearing dead man take the ever-escalating insanity of the story to new heights. By the time the wind dies down, the grass relaxes, the dirt settles, and our hero stands triumphant, Wheatley brings us full circle to the adjacent battlefield. Only now, the hero has achieved his goal; he is no longer the fearful, desperate, lonely man he was at fade in. Despite all the weirdness of its aesthetics, Wheatley manages to sustain a conventional tale of friendship, attainment of goals and personal change.

A Field in England is a refreshing modern specimen of the avant-garde movement, and a celebration of guerilla style filmmaking. Its professional amateurishness and elegant mixing of aesthetic expressions create an abstract beauty for modern cinema-goers to treasure for years to come.

— This article was originally published in Brattle Theatre Film Notes on January 16, 2017