George MacKay is still stellar as always. He became that character. His hurt, guilt, confusion, sorrow are all very real in the film and guy feel it. Also his physical transformation as a youth with an undisclosed illness is so heartbreaking. You can see that he slimed down quite a bit to play the role. Unfortunately Duane's "poet/dreamlike/arthouse" sequences, lack of dialogue, lazy directing, terrible editing and drawn out visuals really take you out of the experience and emotion and it just works against the film. I get that the filmmakers wanted to convey the bleakness of it all in a very artistic fashion but it just didn't work story wise. Such a shame because George is such a talented actor.