It is impossible to separate this movie of soul-erasing grief from its headliner, Casey Affleck. He is in the margins of the frame in many instances of Manchester by the Sea, yet remains the film’s troubled center. This story and this actor were made for one other. Affleck’s used to doing more with less for 20 years.

Consider his IMDB list:

To Die For (yep, he was in it)

Good Will Hunting (and here we go)

Gerry (sure, he’s friends with Damon, too)

American Pie (no … yeah?)

Ocean’s 11-13 (comic relief in a trilogy of comic relief scenes)

Lonesome Jim (you should see it)

The Last Kiss (right, yep, here too)

The Assassination of Jesse James (and … boom)

Gone Baby Gone (hello)

Interstellar (really, this too?)

The Finest Hours (his Disney paycheck movie)

… and now, Manchester by the Sea. (bring on the awards circuit)

(Ed: Also check out Out of The Furnace from 2013)

Like Crash Davis says, “That’s a career, man. In any league.” Idiosyncratic, intense, funny, and hard to define in that Hollywood way the industry likes to define an actor through one-sheets and action figures. He’s not a character guy, and also not a marketable star. Never for one second do I see Ben’s younger brother in any of those roles above, but it’s also undeniable that his connections have helped him in the movie business. And through act 1 of Manchester I wondered whether Casey was simply the quiet Beatle of his circle of famous friends and family.

Then the movie nearly tips over from grief at the halfway pole, and I can’t imagine anyone else using his sad-dog expression like a shield before screaming into the void … nobody other than the late John Cazale. Slumped shoulders, shivering, and always fully committed, we’ll never know what Cazale was capable of due to the cancer that took him too soon. With Manchester, it’s not a stretch to write that Casey Affleck could have at least 20 more years of noteworthy roles in him.

After a flashback the movie plops us like a mangled rubber duck into the toilets and clogged showers of blue-collar Quincy, Massachusetts where a handyman goes through his routine of the dirty day-to-day, and sequesters himself to his basement apartment. Any human interaction usually ends with a pissy response, or a haymaker to the jaw.

A cute girl is rejected at the local bar. A tenant basically offers herself up to him on a silver plate, and he quickly shuts the door. No, that would mean the start of something with someone other than the unseen demons on his shoulders. It’s as if he dresses himself in the same hoodie of misery every morning. Affleck’s character, Lee Chandler, has potential despite being on the back nine of his 30s – he zombie-walks through his responsibilities and still, his boss admits he’s good at his job. So, why does he want to take home gold for running away from life?

Back in Manchester By the Sea, one of those coastal New England towns north of Boston where the locals make their living with lobster pots or selling $6 pitchers of beer, Lee’s brother went the other way. The movie hammers home in flashbacks and comments from the townsfolk that big bro Joe Chandler, played by Friday Night Lights‘ Kyle Chandler, is a stand-up guy. He faces a terminal prognosis straight in the eye, and with this flaky wife (Gretchen Mol) on the verge of a breakdown, his first response is to provide some levity to the situation.  You can see the peacekeeper and provider straight away.  Even in a small town where his family name was a gossip item for years, he likely rose above it.  Way above it. And as good as he was to fellow fishermen, women, and kids, he was at his best in his role of father and brother.

All of those qualities throw Lee Chandler and his nephew Patrick, played by Lucas Hedges, into the same meat-grinder when that illness takes its toll. I won’t reveal anything more. I will note only that there is no solution between uncle and nephew that works completely and totally, as much as we’d like it to. They are getting by as best they can, watching sports and fishing off the flat bed of a lobster boat.

The acting is terrific across the board, with small parts like “hockey coach” and “new fiancé” cast with recognizable faces. But the script needed an Oscar-caliber supporting performance to play Lee Chandler’s ex-wife, and they got it from Michelle Williams. It takes about 90 minutes to get the first smile out of Affleck, to the strains of “I’m Beginning to See The Light,” and then the writer-director Kenneth Lonergan pulls that vibe away just as quickly for an inevitable showdown. And that exchange – supercharged with mumbled dialogue and guilt — pulls no punches.

A lot of the slice-of-life moments are separated by cutaways of the town itself, or nearby neighborhoods, and of course the Atlantic. Set under an elegant music bed, you can make the argument that these montages are the right mood setters for this material. A lot of indies do it. In the Bedroom, another small-town story aching with tragedy, did it. And these breaks certainly help with continuity. Perhaps some of this film was shot in warmer days than the story asks for, and Lonergan told Affleck to pretend like he’s gritting his teeth through a bitterly cold gust off the water.  With cutaways of wintry New England in his back pocket already, all of it works as seamlessly as the flashback scenes.

That’s just not the way I see it. To me, those cutaways are the views and settings we miss when our minds are someplace else. That occurred to me when Lee Chandler got out of his head for a heartbeat or two, looked out of his brother’s bedroom window, and reacted the only way he knows how.