roland-scialom

I'm tempted to see 3 parts in this movie. In the first part, Winter, a writer, ousider and blasé, travels through a part of the backcountry of USA. His trip ends in the city of New York. He has no connection with society and only perceives the most superficial urban aspects he photographs thinking of writing later about what he photographed.

While he takes pictures, he has no idea of what he will write about what he is photographing. My reading of this is that travelling superficially in the society, without an apriori project does not induce to think anything about this society.

In the second part of the movie, because of the circumstances, Winter finds himself in charge of Alice, a 9-year-old girl. This girl is the daughter of a German citizen who will return to Germany on the same flight of Winter, flight scheduled the next day after they met at the airport.

The girl was initially left in Winter's care for a few hours by the mother herself. Yet, things evolve in such a way that a day or two later, being already in Europe, Winter realizes that the girl was frankly abandoned by her mother, in his hands.

At first, after unsuccessfully searching the girl's family for a day or two, Winter thinks of handing her over to the authorities. But things evolve in such a way that the girl, on her own, comes back to him.

There we enter the final part of the movie, where he decides to assume the responsibility for staying with the girl until he meets someone in her family. Thanks to this awareness he ceases to be the outsider blasé he use to be up to a few days ago and becomes a man capable of assuming the responsibilities that existence puts in his path and to make plans.

The Cakemaker touched me because it is a story where (1) the charaters are authentic and each one is commited with his own beliefs; beliefs that are difficult to reconcile with each other; and (2) my wish to witness a happy ending for all of these characters kept me in suspense until the end; an end in which it is possible to foresee a happy end for Thomas and Anat. The direction and the actors did a good job, because the spectator can feel the feelings that the characters express. Yet two points remain unclear to me: (1) what was going through Oren's head to reconcile the vocation of a head of a small family, who loves his wife and young boy, with a vocation of a gay who enjoys sexual contacts with other men? It seems to me unliketly to develop these two personalities in the same psyche. I would have preferred the story if his friendship with Thomas didn't include sex. (2) What transformation took place in Thomas head to assume the role of Oren relatively to Oren's family? Did Thomas realized that it was existencially better to him to be Oren instead of Thomas? This scheme in which two personalities merge reminded me Bergman's Persona.

The society shown in Manchester by the sea, is composed of ordinary people whose life has nothing special. I would say they are middle class folks of a back country town. These people are all banal and some of them even mediocre; for example, Lee ex-wife and Patrick with the youth he frequents. Lee is the guiding thread that drives us in the visit to this society. He travels from Boston to Manchester to take care of the family problems created by the sudden death of his brother. During this journey, he interacts with the people who are part of his past in this city. Throughout this interaction we are presented to episodes of his past, through his memories or through the initiative of the storyteller.

Some facts remain unexplained. The constant bad temper and rudeness of Lee's ex-wife, attitude, which is partly responsible for Lee's drunkenness that originated the fire that destroyed his home, his family and his life. Lee's profession before the tragedy and the reason he was known kind of popular in the city. The psychological process that led Lee to a kind of suicide that consisted of alienating life, leaving Manchester to adopt the life of a nonentity who lives in Boston. The reason why the people of Manchester are reluctant to to hire Lee.

The camera travelings through Manchester landscapes reminded me of the camera travelings through Bordeaux (France) in the movie Moderato Cantabile by Peter Brook. These camera travelings are in tune with the suffering felt in background by the people who are presented to us. Because of this resemblance between Manchester and Moderato, I felt some lack of a soundtrack in tune with the drama which is presented to us. The film proceeds slowly through situations that are not encouraging, except at the end, when Lee seems to have overcome partially the state of alienation in which he had plunged after the tragedy that marked his life. I liked the film in that it consists of a character study of a set of ordinary and banal people living in Manchester by the Sea, and hit by tragedies.