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Three years in the making and filmed on a tight budget, the
movie follows Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), whose solitary life
is upended when his brother dies and he is forced to take care
of his ebullient teenage nephew Patrick (Lucas Hedges) and
return to the Massachusetts fishing village where his past
haunts him.
"What happens to somebody who's dealt a hand that they cannot
recover from?" said Hedges, explaining the movie's central
theme.
The film, opening in U.S. theaters on Friday, is the work of
Kenneth Lonergan, the playwright behind the Tony-award winning
"This Is Our Youth," who makes his debut as a director.
"It's a drama that has a lot of humor in it, but I think it's
just a story that Kenny (Lonergan) tells with an attention to
detail that makes it really feel like real life," said Affleck.
Affleck, the younger brother of actor Ben Affleck, is seen by
awards watchers as a favorite for an Oscar nomination for
playing the taciturn Chandler.
The movie itself, which also stars Michelle Williams as
Chandler's heartbroken ex-wife, has wide critical acclaim,
winning a 98 percent approval rating on review aggregator
website Rotten Tomatoes.
Affleck said the accolades have come as a surprise.
"This was like all independent movies where you don't have
enough money and you don't have enough time and you shoot
everything out of order... So it was a nice surprise to hear
everyone in the crowd laughing and some people crying and it was
a good feeling," he said.
The actor called the story "a complicated experience."
"I'll just tell you what other people said about the movie,
which is that they find it to be very funny and surprisingly
moving," he added.
(Reporting by Rollo Ross for Reuters Television; Writing by Jill
Serjeant; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
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