Kenneth Lonergan’s third film (following You Can Count on Me and Margaret) is set amid inclement weather. There’s something about its New England landscape; people and culture that underscores the picture’s overall dour tone – the sun barely peaks through, which is more than fitting an analogy for a film of this nature. It’s a film about grief, loss and a small cast of people (barely) coping and getting by. And, not for nothing, it’s a really outstanding piece of work.

More of a stage piece than the subject of traditional cinematic fare, it has to its credit not what you’d call a ‘stagy’ feel, but the settings, characters and scenarios are so small and intimate that the story would not feel out of place in a theatre-in-the-round setting. Led by an outstanding Casey Affleck in slow-burn mode, Kenneth Lonergan’s film is one which allows its deeply conceived characters room to grow, germinate under the cover of social mores, before finding what you can only hope is some kind of catharsis. Almost every character is deeply, fatally flawed or broken in one way or another, and Lonergan has enough respect for his audience to not necessarily let each character figure things out.

Told sporadically in flashback, the film gradually opens up and you get a real sense of the backstory and the characters in it; how bad decisions and mistakes can have permanent ramifications. How each of these characters (written and performed with universal skill) cope and relate psychologically fraught and often powerful, with everything that Lonergan constructs is fully thought through.

Performance wise, you can’t fault it. Affleck goes to more profound emotional places here than he’s done before – more so than his haunted turn in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Lucas Hedges, whose Oscar nomination for this will doubtlessly see him become huge in action films or the ilk, has a lot more to work with here than the standard tropes of family dramas would ordinarily permit, and is nuanced and wholeheartedly impressive. Same goes for Michelle Williams, whose part is initially little more than cameo, but as the narrative unfurls, a degree of vulnerability emerges, and her performance reveals itself as multilayered and impacting.

Anyone grumbling about ‘American film’ being all about explosions and superheros? Your time is up.