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Casey Affleck’s performance in ‘Manchester by the Sea’ has critics raving

    by Steven Rea, Contributing movie critic | Columnist, Inquirer
    Published 

Name ring a bell? 

Affleck, younger brother of somebody named Ben, was just about the same age Hedges is now - 19 - when he made his screen debut as Joaquin Phoenix's sociopathic comrade and coconspirator in the 1995 Gus Van Sant/Nicole Kidman black comedy To Die For.

Chasing Kenny 

Affleck says he has wanted forever to work with Lonergan - the award-winning playwright and director of 2000's Oscar-nominated drama You Can Count on Me, with Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo. As a struggling young actor in New York, Affleck would eagerly go up for parts whenever a new Lonergan play was announced.

Making 'Manchester' 

Shot in just a little over a month in and around the titular burg on Massachusett's Cape Ann, Manchester by the Sea was a classic independent project - low-budget, high-pressure. Despite its layers of flashbacks (overall, the story spans about seven years), budgetary and logistical issues required scenes to be shot out of sequence.