Ryan McNeil
Thirteen years ago, a film boldly declared that on a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero. In the thirteen years in between then and now, I’m beginning to believe that not only is everyone’s survival rate at risk, but even more so is the risk of their emotional stability and mental health. Year-in and year-out it seems as though life deals us shitty hand after shitty hand, just waiting for us to fold for good…or make a lousy bet and lose it all.
When we reach that point on the timeline, the question we have to ask ourselves is how we are supposed to gather and move forward. An even better question might be whether or not losing our emotional stability – and likewise losing that big hand – might in fact be a good thing?
As the film begins, Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) is released early from a mental health facility. He got there by assaulting a man his wife was sexually involved with. Now the court have deemed him competent enough to be remanded to his family’s care, and his mother Dolores (Jacki Weaver) has come to take him home. There he begins the process of healing and getting his life back in order. He has no job, no relationship, and is living with his parents. If he hasn’t hit rock-bottom, he can at least see it from where he’s sitting.
The healing process has him spending a lot of time around his father Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro). Talk to The Older Pat for five minutes and you’ll realize that he too isn’t right in the head. The difference is that he chooses to deny it, and his assaults have only resulted in restraining orders. Pat Jr. sees everything around him and knows that he needs to get better. He wants to take control and in so doing, hope that good things can come to a person willing to put in the effort.
One of the good things that does come his way is a new friend, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence). Tiffany is just about as messed-up as Pat is, but not so damaged that she was sent to a psych ward. Tiffany’s husband died suddenly, and she lashed out by sleeping around with anyone that would have her.
When she meets Pat at a dinner party, she sees something in him. It’s something unhinged, unkempt, and uncouth, but it’s something. Before long, she strikes up a friendship with Pat, and offers to help him get enough of his act together that he’ll be able to go face to face with his wife and explain himself.
The question that remains to be answered, is what that help will cost Pat…and what’s in it for Tiffany.
In trying to articulate what I love so much about SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, I keep coming back to the way in which it makes its genre work for it, instead of complacently taking a slot within the genre. It’s easiest to describe the film as a romantic comedy, but the truth is that it leans heavier on the comedy than the romance. All the while, it is most definitely a story of connection. It’s a coming together of two wickedly screwed-up people, and watching as they collectively try to solve the jigsaw puzzles their individual lives have become. The film isn’t interested in will-they-or-won’t-they so much as it wants us to see the absurdity that sparks when crazy people gather in groups. Just as expected, the absurdity flows freely…but so too does the honesty.
That honesty that allows people to admit that they are broken. It’s that same honesty that gives them the strength to want to get better. For some, getting better means going away and working with clearer heads. For others, getting better means playing through the pain, and going right after the things that caused them to crack. Then there’s the whole other class of broken people who don’t want to admit that they are broken. Pat, is the former; a guy who knows where he fucked up, and a guy who wants to try to make things right. What’s interesting is that he describes his goals as “silver linings”. Pat isn’t just trying to reclaim what he lost, he is hoping that if he does his part, that something – anything – good will come his way. It’s a great lesson to take away.
In a way, this growth is symbolized nicely in the dance competition Pat and Tiffany enter. It doesn’t give anything away to say that they aren’t looking to win. Instead they are hoping to come away with something specific achieved, and if they can do that then they will have done what they set out to do and achieved their goal. It takes a certain type of person to stand up and say “I’m not in it to win it”, and instead to measure themselves by the yardstick they set out for themselves. That’s not to suggest that the competition is completely virtuous, but the fact that it centres on small victories illustrates how much there is to be gained by reaching for a specific bar…and doing it surrounded by people who care about you.
All of these ideas and realizations would be wonderful enough in “any old film”, but the fact that they are in a film that executes so. damned. well. is what makes SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK a special film. Like its characters, it isn’t content to sit back and be “good enough”. It wants to show us what is possible when a little effort is applied – effort in acting, in directing, in writing, look, and pace. It’s a surprisingly well-crafted film from director David O. Russell, who has suddenly found himself on a hot streak.
SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is a reminder of what’s possible. The things we want might be out of reach, that doesn’t mean that good things can’t still come from reaching anyway. In that same vein, the film itself is a reminder that no film should be content to stay within its margins. Sure, it can label itself as funny, or scary, or romantic, or thrilling, and fight within the weight class of its choosing. Or, it can aim to transcend its label. By doing that, by not being content with its station, it has the chance to be something special…something unexpected…and perhaps something great.
“…the film itself is a reminder that no film should be content to stay within its margins. Sure, it can label itself as funny, or scary, or romantic, or thrilling, and fight within the weight class of its choosing. Or, it can aim to transcend its label.”
That’s just really well said, Ryan. That sums up this film to a tee. Great review.
Thanks sir – gotta be honest, it wasn’t easy writing about a film nearly three months after I watched it!
Fantastic review, I can’t wait to see this myself, and this write up just made me even more excited.
Well thanks for reading it before you saw the film! I know a lot of people (myself included) who tend not to do that, so I take the visit as a compliment.
Hopefully you’re able to track it down soon – it’s such a fun watch.
I saw this movie a month ago, and I’ve literally waited last minute to write a review because there’s so much to say about this, and you’ve summed it up perfectly. I think one of the main reasons I loved this film was the fact that the content was heavy, but had enough comedic relief to not make it melodramatic. It’s the most uplifting film I’ve seen in a VERY long time!
Sorta tough to wait that long to write, isn’t it?
The content is pretty heavy, a lot heavier than the ads are showing. And then there’s the overall vibe of the whole story which is like watching cars taking a corner at too fast a speed and wondering when one will finally roll.
Looking forward to reading your take on the film!
I guess what I’m curious about is this: What’s so transcendent about Silver Linings Playbook? It’s a romantic comedy that plays within the confines of the romantic comedy genre. It never skirts the rules or bends them or breaks them. It never deviates from formula. It never goes anywhere unexpected. Every beat is pat and predictable. And in the end, the whole thing bubbles over with froth.
Not that that’s a bad thing. Good froth, after all, is still good. But I don’t get what this does other than prove that formulaic genre films can be very good when they’re helmed by a talented director. Russell, obviously, has skill to spare, but he’s not rewriting the book in significant fashion (other than to prove that, again, you can make good movies within the confines of restrictive labels). This is just a romantic comedy movie. A good one, yes, but a romantic comedy movie.
This is going to make it sound like I hate the movie, but I really don’t. I liked it. I liked that Brad Cooper (drop the “ley”!) played someone outside of his usual repertoire. I liked that Jennifer Lawrence once again proved herself as one of America’s best young actresses. (Scratch that. THE best.) I liked De Niro, and I’m hoping we can ret-con the last decade or so of his career and talk about how great he is again. And I liked the crazy love between Pat and Tiffany. There’s a lot to like, it’s just not wrapped up in a genre-breaking package.
What allows SLP to transcend is the way it wants to tell a good story first and worry about the genre beats second. Compare it to other “typical” rom-com’s that have dropped this year like ONE FOR THE MONEY or THIS MEANS WAR. They almost set the genre back by insulting the audience they believe would be interested in romantic comedies.
By comparison, SLP has a sharper story in mind with some well-defined characters. It’s a great film that happens to be romantic and funny. That’s a characteristic I find the very best rom-com’s achieve and what allows them to endure. Think THE APARTMENT, MANHATTAN, or WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.
The other interesting thing is that it never forces the romance. It never creates phony crises that any person with half a measure of rationality wouldn’t be able to sort out the way that so many “typical” rom-com’s do. Basically, take away that bubbly ending and it’s a rom-com that isn’t trying to be all that romantic.
That’s how it transcends, and how (I wager) it will endure: It doesn’t try so damned hard. It could be seen as a straight-up comedy, as a “dramadey”, or indeed as a rom-com…and for reasons I can’t begin to explain, that’s a rarity in Hollywood nowadays.
To a point, I agree– there’s a lot about the film that’s atypical of romantic comedies in general, from the various sicknesses of its cast (Pat’s anger, Tiffany’s grief, Pat Sr.’s gambling addiction, etc), to its shocking altercations between its characters (e.g. Pat elbowing his mom in the face). I think that’s why that bubbly ending bothers me so much; it announces the end of what’s an otherwise fresh entry in romcom canon and commences doing what romantic comedies do, setting up a bunch of inorganic crises that the characters miraculously overcome, from games to dance competitions to absurd bets, all leading up to the big kiss we all knew was coming.
And it’s shot so insistently that it’s at times painful. In fact, the whole movie is pretty heavy-handed; Russell clearly isn’t playing to his usual crowd but to the people who don’t normally watch his movies, I think, which is fine but which also ends up defanging his movie somewhat, particularly toward the end. Put more accurately, I think that insistence undermines the rest of the movie, because everything that precedes that climax manages to strike a balance between operating within the confines of romcom while also offering plot points that are far beyond what we expect from films of that genre. So for the movie to go in the most expected direction possible feels not only disappointing, but also self-sabotaging.
If the ending felt in-line with the film that preceded it I doubt I’d have a problem with Silver Linings at all, but it feels like the climax of a much less interesting movie.
I’m really looking forward to this. It looks like an interesting movie – I guess it looks like a whole lot of fun while being pretty sad at the same time. And I can’t wait to see Bradley Cooper in a role like this!
I vote you spend the time between now and then going on a mini-marathon of O. Russell’s other films: FLIRTING WITH DISASTER, THE FIGHTER, THREE KINGS and the love-it-or-hate-it I (heart) HUCKABEES
It was decent, but I probably would have liked this film better if it done away with the comedy and was played as a straight drama (since in my opinion, there is nothing funny about mental illness).
Also, I thought that the film gave into rom-com cliches by the end. I almost expected it to be raining on that street…
I don’t think the mental illness is what’s being played for laughs so much as it is the conversations that happen around the illness. In fact it’s the splash of cold water anytime Pat Jr. has an episode that makes this film so good. If it only stayed goofy and jokey, I wouldn’t have liked it as much.
If Preston Sturges can frame a comedy around a man plotting to murder his wife, David O. Russell can find humor in mental illness. (Though I agree that the punchlines here are much less about saying, “Ha, ha! Pat is a nut job!” and more about generating laughs over how Pat’s conflict with both his illness and the illnesses of others influence his behavior and so on.)
Neither particularly romantic nor a comedy. I found the lack of willingness to actual tackle mental health a real let-down. One minute Cooper is having breakdowns and is “crazy”, the next minute (the whole second half of the film in fact), he’s more or less fine. The film ends with him saying, “…fix crazy by doing something crazy. Thank you!” To which I roar BULLSHIT!
The people all around him (including Lawrence) are pretty despicable or pointless people/characters. ***SPOILERS**
**SPOILERS***Forcing him into a bet using the family fortune than lying to him that his wife will be there to make him do it? Classy… reeeal classy. Then Lawrence flips out on him because his wife actually does show up. How is that his fault.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that there are no characters in the movie that I liked or wanted to latch onto – except Cooper’s. Sure Weaver and Tucker are nice people, but they’re completely wasted or pointless. And the problem with Cooper’s character is that he doesn’t make much sense.
Ultimately the film won me over, but I think the whole thing is a majorly missed opportunity.
I think part of this is on me, because I might have overhyped this coming out of TIFF.
I didn’t think he was “fine” for the second half of the film. He still doesn’t know to walk away when he sees the fight shaking down at The Eagles game, and with that same move, he lets down the one person who’s been helping him get his shit back together.
Everything that happens from the bet onward isn’t classy, but it’s believable. He’s a sick person surrounded by sick people and everyone is enabling each other. So no, it isn’t fair (or classy), but it rings true to everyone’s individual agendas. That’s part of the movie’s appeal – Pat might be nuts, but he’s just one nut in the nutjar and at least he knows he’s a nut.
There’s a lot of comedy in this movie…starting with anytime Chris Tucker walks into a scene…and a complicated romance that probably won’t survive a week. However, for the moment that this film exists in, it’s a sweet little affair.
Come back to it sometime when the dust settles.
It’s not you. It’s everyone. The hype machine on this thing is ridiculous.
In my opinion the fight at The Eagles game was just another lazy plot maneuver instead of a spot in which his illness could’ve really been smartly tackled (see what I did there? heh heh). Of COURSE he’s going to fight. It has nothing to do with illness, he’s watching his brother being held down by too racists and having the shit kicked out of him. I’d fight too.
And the plot points and character bits might be believable, but they’re not
As for the comedy in the film, I never laughed; not once. I smiled at a lot of stuff, but nothing is flat out funny – people in my screening were laughing at stuff that I thought were pretty serious things. Needless to say I was baffled and a little bit embarrassed. The Chris Tucker thing was just jarring and bordered on offensive. The token black guy shows up out of the blue at the most “perfect” of moments to help the plot along and say shit like, “black it up.” Hilarious. He mysteriously shows up at the dance. So he’s out for real now? His character just didn’t make any sense and was only there for one reason: we need a black guy to show up and say something funny once in a while. It’s like meeting the therapist at the game. Absolutely NO REASON for him to be there, other than it’s funny to have a guy with an Indian accent yell “cocksucker” (this is what pissed me off about the other most overrated movie, “Easy A” too if you’ll remember).
I still give the movie a “thumbs up,” but just barely and not for any of the reasons most people are praising the movie for.
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
Let’s consider what generates the humour and it’s treatment of women.
The film wants to treat mental illness sympathetically but also use it as a crutch for the humour.
Pat Solitano Jnr. (Bradley Cooper) is a bipolar sufferer whose manic episodes are presented as ‘wacky’ and ‘zany’ and the audience is encouraged to laugh. It makes fun of his suffering and in doing so, mocks him.
Pat Jnr. throws a book through a window and wakes up his sleeping elderly parents to harangue them at length. It is a manic episode that is threatening and involves property damage yet the actor’s playing and cutaway to reaction shot editing, it encourages the audience to laugh at what would in reality be a distressing episode.
Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) has severe OCD. He becomes extremely agitated when he discovers a missing envelope of a box of hundreds. He makes another character sit immobile for the duration of a football game. We are encouraged to laugh at this.
He has been banned from the ground for fighting. And we’re encouraged to laugh at this also.
The other characters talk about Pat Snr’s aggression in a lighthearted manner, they indulge and fail to condone his violence behaviour. Their tolerance encourages the audience to laugh.
Danny (Chris Tucker) is non-specifically ill and is a generic figure of fun.
The mentally ill don’t find their own behaviour funny, they find it deeply upsetting. This film is deeply repugnant.
The mental instability of Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence) is rooted in the grief of losing her husband which manifests itself as promiscuity. She is ‘cured’ of this illness (her promiscuity and thus her mental imbalance) by entering into a monogamous relationship with Pat Jnr.
Promiscuity in women is historically (and as it is here) portrayed as an aberration, as an illness, as a condition to be cured. The ‘cure’ is abstinence, monogamy or being locked up away from society.
In literature Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is the great example. I would suggest promiscuity is neither a crime nor an illness though this film wouldn’t agree with me.
JANE EYRE SPOILERS AHEAD
The first Mrs Rochester is promsicuous and as Mr Rochester can’t bear the social embarrassment, he has her declared insane and locks her up. She is almost certainly insane however after spending years in isolation in the tower.
Pat Jnr’s mother, Dolores Solitano (Jacki Weaver) is a benign idiot who only exists to provide a family environment to which the leads can retreat to at the end of the movie having been ‘cured’ as demanded by the conventions of romantic comedy.
She is only there as a symbol of family. She serves no other function in this film. Her presence has no bearing on the behaviours in or the outcomes of the film.
Oh and finally, this film is unduly salacious. Occassionally it’s justified as in the learning to dance scenes. When showing Tiffany from Pat Jnr’s point of view, we are seeing his desire.
In the same scene we’re also shown her body simply to afford the audience a langorous lecherous look. That is, its offering a good lech at a grieving widow.
Consistency: Prior to the dance competition Pat Jnr seems not to be afflicted anymore. Maybe he’s cured or the film is bending over backwards to squeeze itself into a generic romcom ending. Very weak.
The film closes with problems neatly resolved as demanded by the conventions of romantic comedy. There is no truth in this film.
If any of the above was contained within a movie of scabrous bad taste it may have been funny but to mock the the suffering while offering them a fig-leaf of understanding is abhorrent. It’s not bad taste that makes this is an awful movie but good taste.
+1
Welcome to The matinee sir, and thanks for starting off with such a thoughtful comment.
When we get introduced to Pat’s bipolarism, I didn’t feel the urge to laugh at it for its wackiness or zaniness, so much as I laughed at how wildly inappropriate so much of it was. I wasn’t laughing at buffoonery so much as I was laughing in disbelief.
When we get to his episode with his parents in the middle of the night, my audience began laughing (probably at the ludicrousness of firing a book out a window), but very quickly clammed up when it became clear that pat was having an episode. That’s a narrow path to walk: A situation that starts out comic, but quickly turns dark. Not only do I think the scene works, but it’s one of the moments that I felt elevated the film above being a typical comedy.
As for Pat Sr., his role in the film is important. Not only is he a symbol of how the bipolar apple can fall close to the OCD tree, but he’s there to remind us what happens when such people don’t recognize these things about themselves. Again, his mannerisms aren’t meant to be played for broad slapstick so much as they are “I can’t believe I’m hearing this”. What’s more, Pat Sr. is a cautionary tale about looking out for number one. Every little thing he wants – the routine, the betting stakes, the lucky touches – are things he wants for his own gain. It’s an attitude that Pat Jr. has to shake…one that he’s in danger of repeating by trying to shape up only to get his wife back.
As for Tucker, I treated him like a Greek chorus. He comes in, he does his bit, he goes. He has very little to do with anything, yet is so light on his feet in the way he steps in and out of the fray.
Before I get to Tiffany, I find it interesting that you see either one of these two as being “cured” by the time the film ends. The only thing we know for sure when it all ends is that Pat Jr. and Tiffany are together. I didn’t get the impression that either one of them was cured. What’s worse, I left the theatre feeling a little bit melancholy because I realized that two damaged people had hooked up. They’re going to have such a hard time moving forward holding on to one-another (as opposed to if they’d each found someone more stable).
But yes, Tiffany was traumatized by the sudden death of her husband, and she lashed out by sleeping around. If she’d drowned herself in drinking or drugs, we wouldn’t bat an eye…but because she gets self-destructive with a series of sexual exploits, she’s another in a line of women who need to be “cured”. She’s not in a good place, and she knows it. Between Tiffany, Pat Jr, and Pat Sr, Tiffany is the one who has her shit the most together…but that’s not saying much.
Dolores actually has a subtle but important role in the whole fracas. She is the enabler. She is the one who looks at damaged people in her life and says “That’s just who they are”. She has gone years without calling her husband on his disease, and just sprung her son while he was being treated for his. There are lots of people like her in the world…people who think it’s just better if we all get along. Turning a blind eye the way people like Dolores do often results in things spiralling out of control, and when that happens, the blame is just as much on them as it is those who lash out.
There is no consistency, and that’s part of the point. For people like Pat and Tiffany, every day will be a struggle. Between discipline, therapy, and support they will be able to get some sort of a handle on it. There will be good days and bad days..but it will always be there.
That’s part of why I love the movie so much. It has an awful lot to say while it’s making us laugh.
Thankyou, it’s a pleasure to be here.
I’ve broken your response down and answered each point in turn. I hope in doing so I haven’t inadvertently taken anything out of context. If I have, please feel free to correct me.
‘When we { } in disbelief.’
Yes it’s inappropriate behaviour but so is Dustin Hoffman’s in Rainman, I didn’t laugh at that character either. But that film didn’t ask me to. It did ask me to laugh at Cruises’ short-tempered and self serving exasperation.
‘When we { } typical comedy.’
The scene’s starting point is a dark place; it’s a manic episode but it’s played for laughs with the book being fired out of the window in a cartoon stylee and is continued to be played for laughs with De Niros’ mugging. I would agree that yes, typically comedy’s are funny, which is why this one fails.
‘As for Pat Sr., his role { } his wife back.’
He mannerisms are played for slapstick. See the reaction shot of Tucker being forced to sit still. Or that of the TV remote control placed exactly in the (according to Pat Snr’s) wishes. He’s not a cautionary tale, he can’t help but behave like this. His ‘routine’ and his ‘lucky touches’ are the symptoms of his suffering. And they are played for laughs in the editing choices made. e.g. the edits mentioned above. They are symptoms not ‘attitude’ and Pat cant shake them because his suffering, his symptoms take on an entirely different form.
‘As for Tucker, [ } of the fray.’
Yes he comes in, he plays his mental illness for laughs and leaves. He is a comic sidekick. He is also mentally ill except when isn’t such as when he’s called on to teach the white folks how to dance. The cavalier approach to consistency of how mentally ill the characters is another flaw in the movie. From the beginning of the dance competition (and possibly before that ) to the end of the film Pat Jnr seems to have no symptoms at all.
‘Before I get to Tiffany { } more stable).’
By employing a traditional romcom structure the film implicitly suggests that they live happily ever after. Tiffany ends the film in a monogamous relationship, she is no longer promiscuous and therefore she is cured. Pat Jnr is no longer having manic episodes nor has he for the last half hour (hour?) of screen-time.
‘But yes, { } saying much.’
If you’re agreeing with me that Tiffany’s illness is defined by her promiscuity, then it follows that you must also agree that she is cured by entering into a monogamous relationship and ceasing her promiscuity. Defining promiscuity as a symptom of mental illness has been an excuse for both the medical and the penal authorities (often in collusion) to visit all manner of indignities (and possibly crimes) in women.
‘Dolores actually { } lash out.’
Her only action in this movie (she reacts a lot but is a very inert character in her motivation) is to pick Pat Jnr up from the hospital. She could be written out, have Pat Snr pick Jnr up from the hospital and the film or the character’s behaviour won’t be altered in any way. She’s redundant.
‘There is no consistency { } it will always be there.’
The film ends with a V/O by Pat Jnr saying how much he now loves Sundays with the family – this is how romcoms end, with neat resolution and the promise of happy ever after. There is no suggestion of difficult times ahead. Their story ends there. The film concludes with mental illness (bipolar-ism, promiscuity) cured by romantic love. This is why this film is found wanting, it lacks honesty. I failed to laugh.
‘That’s part of why I love the movie so much. It has an awful lot to say while it’s making us laugh.’
It says we can be happy if we fall in love which is the only thing it says. I failed to laugh.
Our enjoying(?) two wildly differing interpretations of the same film is in itself interesting. It begs the question why?
So here’s my thought. Imagine this film is a house. You’re looking at the exterior, admiring the strength of the walls, the line of the porch, the way the light catches on the windows in the evenings perhaps.
I however have seen the foundations and know that they are suffering from severe subsidence which prevents me from enjoying the walls, porch, windows etc.
It’s just a thought.
Happy holidays.