The Silver Linings Playbook

The Silver Linings Playbook has been on my "gotta-see" list ever since I learned that Jennifer Lawrence was set to co-star in the David O. Russell dramedy back in early 2011. Due to her breakout role as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games, everybody is now well acquainted with the young actress's acting ability and IT girl charm, but I've actually been a fan of hers since watching her unnervingly raw performance in 2010's Winter's Bone. Portraying a gritty realism not often seen in female roles, Lawrence dominated the film and moved the audience with an honesty seemingly beyond her years. She was the perfect choice to bring to life Katniss who is already this decade's symbol of 21st Century womanhood: strong, brave, and unafraid to be vulnerable. This is why any movie that she attaches herself to is a must see. As soon as I saw an early trailer of Silver Linings, I knew it was something special. I love deranged comedies about dysfunctional people, and the film looked like it had that, plus enough warmth to make it all seem relevant. Recently I got a chance to see it and it was actually much better than I expected. Funny, original, inspiring, enticing, engrossing, fun!, moving and refreshingly natural, the movie has more than enough to make it competitive this awards season. Although it would be only too easy for me to go into a long film-technical soliloquy of all the ways this movie just works, I will spare the reader with a shorter list of it's top 5 winning elements. 

1. Bradley Cooper

I bet my glowing praise of Lawrence at the beginning of this article led you to believe that she would win the top spot on my favorite-things-about-this movie list. But no. Lawrence is amazing, as expected, but I was even more impressed and a little in awe of Bradley Cooper's performance as Pat Solitano, the recently-discharged-from-a-mental-institution main character. An out-n-out crazy character would probably be much easier to play, but the subtlety of this role left Cooper with a much greater challenge. The character's complexity is such that when we first meet him,we don't initially see him as unhinged. Yes he's honest --too honest--, somewhat inappropriate ("you say more inappropriate things than appropriate things" he is told by Lawrence) and  definitely has some boundary issues, but we don't see him as someone who needs or needed help. He's just quirky. It is in scenes where Pat's thin control over his emotions is shattered by seemingly innocent triggers and a potent, unexpected vulnerability arises that Cooper's performance transitions from merely entertaining to purely enthralling. In these scenes the brevity of the character and of the entire film comes into sharper view. Pat is not just a guy with issues, he is a man whose depth of pain is greater than his materials to cope. Shocking, but not off putting, this revelation somehow makes us feel closer to him. And we stay close throughout the whole movie. By the end, our emotions are so intertwined with his success that at the movie's zenith we find ourselves clapping, not internally, but outwardly like uninhibited 5 year-olds (at least that's what happened in my theater). Cooper's performance is not the only reason the film inspires this, but he is the glue that holds it all together and grounds it in refreshing, unapologetic humanity.

 2. What it Says About Being Crazy
 What does it mean to be crazy? Is it simply acting out or is it all tied up in your emotions somehow? The film does not spend time exploring this question but rather answers it by plaintively stating that being crazy is no more or less than having flaws and being ill-equipped to hide them as well as the rest of us. In making this argument Russell at once enlightens and discomforts us by deleting the multilayer barrier we like to keep between ourselves and the mentally ill down to just one thin layer. We could all be Pat. We're all just one breakdown, one loss, one major disappointment away from our walls crashing down around us, revealing our most deeply submerged flaws to the world.  But in our carefully constructed facades are we really helping ourselves or causing long term damage that if left unexamined will manifest in some hurtful way? The film does not just show us the expressive, clearly unhinged form of crazy that Pat has, but insanity at all levels. In Robert De Niro's character (isn't it GREAT to see De Niro in a good movie again?) we see a father figure battling with a quieter, but far more encompassing form of crazy than his son. For so many reasons--his Italian pride, his commitment to family, his labor intensive work--Pat's dad never developed a healthy self awareness which left him unable to connect with his children emotionally. Instead Pat Sr. channels his feelings into a fanatical obsession with his favorite sports team, an obsession so great that he develops a fairly serious case of OCD. Pat may be a shiftless nut case, but he's better off wearing his crazy on the outside than holding it all inside like his father does.


3. How it portrays Crazy

I know I might be beating a dead horse here, but it is important to applaud Russell and the cast for making a film that so subtly achieves its intention the viewer doesn't realize that his mind is being changed until it's too late. Mental illness is not a curse or the result of being genetically unlucky (well, not always). It is, like every other manifestation of our personality, the result of our history. Pat doesn't act out because he's just nuts; he does it because he was hurt. He was not able to handle this hurt in a healthy way because he wasn't given a healthy emotional foundation from his father, who in turn wasn't given one either. The film isn't just about Pat's journey to recovery, it's about retracing his steps to find the roots of his illness. In doing so we realize that madness is not just an irrational reaction, it's based on cause and effect. This is not a new idea, but it's good to reinforce this fact, not only because it makes us more sympathetic to the mentally ill, but because we can cut ourselves a break for not always maintaining rigid control over our own emotions. In times like these when so much is out of our control, it helps to know that showing a few cracks doesn't mean we have to shatter.We can make a beautiful mosaic from the shards.

4. This movie is Really FUNNY

After all of my deep dark soliloquizing on mental illness, it might be a surprise to you that this film is also a hilarious comedy. Despite the considerable amount of time it takes exploring the darkness of insanity, humanity's formidable ability to squeeze humor out of even the most serious of experiences is also well displayed. It's probably the funniest movie I've seen this year and that includes the naughty teddy bear movie TED (which incidentally I didn't find that funny. More on this later). The dialogue is very fresh (i hate when ppl say this. What does fresh mean in relation to dialouge?..but it is fresh somehow), it's sharp, witty and even though it deals with some very adult themes, everyone in the film appears very cuddly. They are because they know how to laugh at themselves. Some of the laughs come out of nowhere and hit you so fast that you almost miss them ("Since when do cops have cards?"). Some are drawn out over lively scenes that showcase the natural chemistry between Tiffani and Pat, the push-pull relationship between Pat and his dad and especially in the awkwardly beautiful battles between Pat and normal society. Or just normal. The scene where he wakes his parents to lambast Ernest Hemingway's writing is classic. I expect to see it played over and over again this awards season, sandwiched in between announcements of his nominations. I wonder if he'll win anything...


5. Jennifer Lawrence, oh excuse me, JLaw, ( yes, I call her JLaw, pass it on) is Super Great
Whether she's shooting arrows into the cogs of The Capital's machine or showing steely resolve in the face of an Ozark-style beat down, leave it to this girl to show us what bravery really is. As Tiffani Maxwell the recently widowed reformed whore that Pat just can't get off his back (and why would he want to?), Lawrence portrays yet another girl who handles her business like a woman. Tiffani is kind of promiscuous, but unlike nearly every other character in the film she doesn't run away from her flaws. She draws her strength from them. "There is always going to be a part of be that's dirty and sloppy," she says heatedly to Pat, "and I like it." It's that kind of shocking self-acceptance that at first makes us think, like Pat, that she is the one who is really unhinged. After all, only mad people are happy with themselves for giving into their base instincts. But from the moment they start working together on a mutually beneficial project (just when you think this movie has it all....they start to dance!), Tiffani becomes Pat's rock and his last best hope for sanity. With unrelenting sass and unapologetic moxy, she dives into Pat's crazy and saves him from his own delusions. I knew Lawrence was a great actress, but I wondered how she'd fair opposite the likes of Robert De Niro. When they encountered each-other later in the film, I watched for any break down in her performance, for any display of nerves beside the mac-daddy of seasoned actors. I found none. Lawrence's loud-mouth, brash and forth-right Tiffani never faltered in the presence of De Niro's tough Italian patriarch. Seeing her take him on was truly something to see and no less than what we all expect from her; a frank, unapologetic and strangely feminine display of  big brassy balls. I can't wait to see what she does next.


The most common lie told everyday is "I'm Fine." Would it really be so bad to tell the truth for once? The movie proposes that if we don't, we run the risk of hurting ourselves and others. To put it in even better perspective, think of crazy as floating further and further away from the shore on a small inflatable raft. At first you fight to get back to land, but after a while you stop fighting and accept that the raft is as close to land as you're going to get. Eventually you convince yourself that the raft is land. This is what the movie showcases: people in various stages of being adrift and the frustrated loved ones who stand precariously on shore throwing out lifesavers that lay forgotten. But reaching out isn't enough. To save someone from themselves, sometimes you have to dive in. Dive in people, Dive in.