Manchester By The Sea

I continue to think about Kenneth Lonergan's new film "Manchester By The Sea," trying to make sense of its morality.  The hero Lee Chandler is a person completely shut down after the disaster which befalls him, and for which he is entirely at fault even if the fire department lets him off the hook.  Stumbling drunkenly into town to buy some more beer and forgetting to put the fire screen in place is what the Church might call the Sin of Omission rather than the Sin of Commission.  Since Lee is a believing Catholic to the degree that he explains seriously to his nephew that the boy's father's corpse must be kept frozen until spring since as Catholics they cannot countenance cremation as a mode of burial, we must assume that other aspects of the Church also have power over him.  Lee encourages his nephew in his sexual pursuit of the girls in his high school, an interesting but common male dereliction of moral duty, although he himself is too shut down to pursue sex for his own satisfaction.  It seems to me, on the other hand, that his failure to seek absolution from the priest of his parish, despite the fire department's fellow working class Irish buddies' words, is unlikely, first because the priest would have come to him, to bring him to the confessional.  It is also a moral duty for Catholics to confess to sins and seek absolution.  It makes no difference what the fire department buddies think;  the entire film is about the effect of a drastic sense of guilt which grips Lee.  He wants to live with his guilt, he cannot seek absolution which is the bounden duty of every Catholic.  It is prideful to continue to carry his guilt with him, but doing so allows him to indulge his nephew in his pursuit of making out with the girls in his high school, the same pride that permits him to turn down the plea for a healing from his former wife who must carry some sense of guilt herself.  It is an interesting film for its depiction of a man who is guilty of the sin of pride and dying while still alive.