Yesterday, I watched a movie named "Manchester by the Sea". It was about an uncle and his nephew. The story was a tragic one. It doesn't flow in time sequence, there are many flashbacks along the story. I'm going to write a summary of the story according to the chronological order of the events.
Lee Chambers, a father of three kids, is married to Randy, a mother who is solicitous about her children's well-being. One night, Lee gathers his friends and throws a party at the basement of their home. It continues until a very late hour. Randy comes to the basement and says that they are making a lot of noise and her children are asleep. She asks them to leave because with so much noise she thinks that they are going to wake the children up. When they leave, Lee starts a fire in the fireplace and wants to drink a beer but there isn't left any. So he leaves the house to get some from a grocery. When he returns, he sees that his home is on fire. The firefighters are already there. They were able to save Randy, but they couldn't save the children. Randy has gotten in a shock, so an ambulance takes her to the hospital.
Lee stays there until the fire is extinguished and the bodies of his children are taken to morgue. Then the police takes him to the police station for his statement and he tells them about the party and the fireplace. Apparently, the cause of the fire was a burning log dropping out from a not-so-well-placed pile. As they release him, he tries to commit suicide by snatching a policeman's gun from his belt and shooting himself. But other policemen gets the gun from his hand before he is able to.
After this tragedy, he breaks up with Randy and moves to Boston. He gets a job as a janitor, rents a basement and starts living there. But he isn't the same person anymore. He has lost his enthusiasm in life. He eschews from making personal connections. When he gets stressed by the tenants he behaves badly to them. In short, he never recovers from the loss of his children and his guilt.
Some years later, his elder brother dies because of cardiac arrest and Lee returns to his hometown, Manchester. He tends to the required arrangements and goes to his brother's lawyer to learn about his will. He finds out that his brother wanted Lee to take custody of his son in case of his death. Accepting the custody of his nephew is a tough decision for Lee because he doesn't want to go under the resposibility of parenting again. Despite his fears, he accepts.
His nephew is a very social teenager. He is in the ice hockey team, he plays in a amateur rock band, and he has two girlfriends who don't know about each other. He rarely stays alone, and he is really connected to his social life. He wants to stay in Manchester while Lee wants to take him to Boston, where he works. Lee can't find a proper job in Manchester because it's a small town and most people know about his depression which he has never been able to get over.
They have a hard time as they get used to each other. I will skip this part of the story until the incident that made Lee give up the guardianship. After his encounter with her ex-wife and her baby, Lee goes to a bar and hits the bottom of the bottle. When he gets drunk enough he starts a fight and gets beaten up. The next day he dozes off while cooking some meal. He wakes up just before the oven catches fire. After making the same mistake which costed his three children's lives, he makes up his mind and lets a close family friend to adopt his nephew.
One of the things this movie shows us is how some people leave their past behind, and some always live with it.