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By, Jacob Krueger

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MANCHESTER BY THE SEA:

Tests, Flashbacks & Characters That Don't Change

We’re used to seeing character driven movies that are about characters going through great personal changes. We’re used to watching these kind of family stories, especially dysfunctional family stories. We’re used to watching stories about families coming together.

That’s because most movies are built around a very simple principle, which is the principle of change-- the idea that characters are undergoing this journey so that they can change. Normally we think of this as a change for the better.

One of the interesting things about Manchester By the Sea’s structure is that this character, Lee Chandler, played by Casey Affleck, is a character that wants to change but simply cannot.

This is a movie about a character who wants to change but can’t, failing to overcome his demons.

So this week, we’re going to talk about movies where the character does not change.

There are a couple of different kinds of these movies, but Manchester By the Sea falls into a very specific category of them. This is a movie that I call a Test Movie.

You can almost think of it as the other side of the coin from a Change Movie.

For most movies, the structure exists for a very simple purpose; take a character who starts at point A and move them to Z.

So, if you have a character who’s extraordinarily kind, we might move that character to a place of selfishness. If we have a character who is incredibly selfish we might move that character through a place of kindness.

Now, some Change Movies work like a circle.

For example, if you think of a movie like The Wrestler, it starts with a character whose life revolves around wrestling, and we move him the furthest we can move him from there, which is to a place of actually integrating with society. We get him a girlfriend and a relationship with his daughter. He gets a job at a deli that he loves, making him feel like he once did in the ring.

Then what we do in the second half is take everything away. We take away his daughter, the job and the girlfriend and we ended back where we started.

In these Circular Change Movies, a character doesn’t go back to where they started it in the same way; they go back in a different way.

The Wrestler is not the same person he was at the beginning, even though he’s changed and then changed back.

But most movies and TV shows based on a Change Structure take a more A-Z approach to change.

For example: Breaking Bad: A mild-mannered professor turns into cold-blooded meth dealing killer and guess what—he loves it!

Another example is American Beauty. The character starts off afraid to stand up to his wife and be himself, goes through a total nervous breakdown while he is lustfully pursuing his 16-year-old daughter’s best friend, and somehow transforms himself into a person who’s at peace with his universe.

These are the standard change movies we’re used to seeing.

Then we have test movies, and there are lots of them.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is a test movie. It’s a story about a character who does not change. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is the same at the beginning as he is in the end. Nothing changes, but he does get tested.

He gets tested in his desire to pursue the Ark of the Covenant.

Any normal, reasonable human being tested in the way that Indiana Jones is tested would simply decided “Screw this Ark. I’m going to go back to teaching where it’s nice and safe,” but Indiana Jones consistently makes the opposite decision.

He doesn’t change but he does get tested: Is he ...