Your life can be uprooted in just one night, from one single action. We hear it all of the time on the news, shootings, car crashes, kidnapping, and illness. Manchester by the Sea properly and effectively displays the aftermath of such an action, capturing the mix of emotions that come along with a tragedy.

Manchester by the Sea deserves the award of the Best Picture Oscar. This movie is easily the greatest, most powerful production that I have ever seen, and its images will stay with me for a long time.

The painful and irreparable wrongness of life is the theme of Kenneth Lonergan’s superbly acted new film about grief. It stars Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler, a guy who lives on his own in Boston, working as a janitor and filled with rage at the world and himself. A reliable and dedicated worker, Lee unblocks drains and takes out trash, letting off steam in local pubs. His strict routine allows him to interact with other people as infrequently as possible.

This desire to be alone changes when he returns to his hometown after his brother’s death. Lee Chandler had gotten away from his hometown of Manchester by the Sea years ago. The Massachusetts hometown of the title looms oppressively over Lee. It is a port dominated by the fishing industry. There is no seaside, no beach. It is a place of work. With constant reminders from his past, he must try to cope with a new challenge: supporting and taking care of his teenage nephew. The movie includes a series of flashbacks showing Chandler’s past, increasing the viewer’s understanding of tragedy, as well as pulling at the heartstrings along the way.

One thing that stands out about this movie is the acting. Lee Chandler is a man who lives with so much pain. Affleck masters the pain in his small gestures and in his flat, careful tone. The force of his built up emotion is terrifying, but so is the amount of self-control it takes to keep everything bottled up inside. Affleck conveys Lee’s avalanche of emotions as well as the numbness that holds it all back. He’s broken, but he’s also smart enough to realize that nothing will make him whole again. Manchester by the Sea is also nominated for having the Best Actor in a Leading Role (Casey Affleck), Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Lucas Hedges), and Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Michelle Williams).

Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea is deeply empathetic and witty, capturing the lives of the working class with accuracy. His characters are deeply drawn. Lonergan makes his characters feel real and relevant. Affleck is able to make audiences care about his fictional characters as if they were people they have known their whole lives.

Kenneth Lonergan did a great job of bringing humor and life into a difficult situation, with a broad emotional spectrum. He has an amazing sense of who the actor should be, as well as how the performances should be carried out. He writes in such a way that it is extremely difficult to predict what is going to happen next, keeping his audiences thoroughly engaged. This is about life as it is lived in the real world, with unhealable pain, loose ends untied, life lessons unlearned. There are no easy answers or conclusions in Lonergan’s work, making his work even more realistic.

All of the aspects of this movie come into one so nicely, creating a movie that sticks with you for a long time. You feel what the characters feel due to an emotional attachment that this film creates. Manchester by the Sea is very much deserving of the award for best picture.

Even against other top rated films that seem to have more buzz surrounding them, Manchester by the Sea outdoes them all with its intensity and the amount of realness to it. This movie is easily the greatest, most powerful production that I have ever seen.  The movie will be on DVD and will be available for rent on February 21.