SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (David O. Russell 2012)

[Chris Knipp]

David O. Russell: SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/539/vGvTpc.jpg
BRADLEY COOPER AND JENNIFER LAWRENCE IN SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (JULIA STILES ON LEFT)

Long shots

David O. Russell dips further into the mainstream and accessible but still with an original touch in Silver Linings Playbook, a romance between two mental patients freshly out on their own and making a go at living healthy lives. The heart of the movie is the constant encounters of this pair and their sprightly, unexpected dialogue. Russell's story, based on the novel by Matthew Quick, offers no profound insight but neatly weaves together family and personal themes and provides a showcase for its actors, headed by the vibrant Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawence, both stepping into bolder, more three-dimensional roles than before, and an unusually natural Robert Di Niro, who blends seamlessly into his part as Pat Solitano, Sr., father of Pat (Cooper), now a full-time bookmaker and superstitious, OCD-ruled supporter of the home town team, the Philadelphia Eagles. Silver Linings Playbook lacks the brilliance of Russell's best movies. Gone are the outrageous set pieces of Three Kings or the hilarious surprises of Flirting with Disaster, or even the intensely atmospheric chaos of his recent The Fighter. But the warmth and non-stop energy lead to a nifty feel-good finale that neatly resolves several plot lines, generational, fiscal, and romantic. It's no surprise that this won the People's Choice Award at Toronto, a prize that heralded greater things when won by Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech.

With their swooping, jumpy images (which somehow avoid the usual handheld cliches) cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi and editors Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers grab the screen and insist on holding it from frame one like hyperactive children demanding constant attention. It's hard to keep up the intensity through the whole movie and it lags a bit in the middle, but Cooper and Lawrence just don't let up in their scenes together. The film rhythms at first are a deliberate visual objective correlative of Pat Solitano's manic state. He's diagnosed as bipolar, but we don't get much of a look at the other pole. Russell's view of the dark side, as in The Fighter, comes through violence, and both Pats have serious anger issues., though differently manifested. Pat Sr. has been permanently barred from the Philadelphia football stadium for his violent outbursts. Pat Jr. has just done eight months in a mental institution in Baltimore in lieu of incarceration for nearly killing his wife's lover, her high school faculty colleague, whom he discovered with her in the shower -- with their wedding music, Stevie Wonder's "Ma Cherie Amour," -- playing outside. That song is a trigger for him, and he's still capable of waking up his parents at four in the morning in a rage over how Hemingway ends A Farewell to Arms.

The action is confrontational and precipitous, as when Pat's mom Dolores (the formidable Jackie Weaver of Animal Kingdom) springs him early, and Pat's pal Danny (a mercurial Chris Tucker) pops up in the car with them leaving the mental hospital, and then gets stopped and taken back. Or when they arrive at the Solitanos' kitschy Philly row house and Pat Sr. is immediately in his son's face demanding if he's really okay. Or when Pat meets Tiffany (Lawrence), and neither of them has any social restraints or verbal filters. On his first jog back home he goes to the high school where he used to substitute and scares the principal (Patsy Meck) half to death. No wonder Nikki, Pat's wife, has a restraining order against him. He needs restraining. On the other hand Tiffany, a self-styled "crazy slut with a dead husband," wants to have sex with Pat, but he is saving himself for his estranged wife.

Pat is on a tear to get his life together, following a "silver linings" playbook of positivity, his motto "Excelsior." He refuses to take his meds, on the familiar grounds that they make him bloated and mentally unclear. He has lost a lot of weight and is in the bet shape of his life, his health kick mainly focused on long runs in the neighborhood. This is how he and Tiffany have their first encounters after they've met at an aborted dinner party, jogging, and they go on an oddball, aborted date that nonetheless shows plenty of chemistry between them, though Pat wants to save himself for Nikki, whom he's getting in shape to win back. He's also reading his way through her high school English syllabus -- Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, the Hemingway book -- to become closer to her.

Craziness is okay because people who are doing well also share it. Pat's married, highly successful best pal Ronnie (John Ortiz) is really full of rage, and his own father is seriously obsessive-compulsive, but making good money. And it's all a lark. There is sympathy and humanity in this approach even if it's also a bit of a whitewash. Viewers will have to decide for themselves if they're willing to make the trade-off. For me, it was sufficient pleasure to see Russell weave some of his old quirky magic. Not many American directors are this good at personal confusion and generations. Even if the absurdity and unexpectedness are not at the level of his best work, he manages to do something bold enough here that makers of Hollywood rom-coms may find they have a new standard of originality to meet.

The kooky-crazy tinge to the two lead characters, whose scenes as Justin Chang wrote in Variety (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117948262?refcatid=31) are "sculpted with an almost David Mamet-like sharpness," keep the action precipitous and smart despite a familiar story arc toward reconciliation and romance. This is also an homage to Philadelphia and sports betting. A notable "aria" by Tiffany is one in which she recites Eagles scores to show they did best in games when Pat Jr. was with her, despite Pat Sr.'s superstitious, compulsive notion that Pat Jr. has to be in the house with him for a good outcome and successful bets.

Silver Lining's multiculturalism is tidy and schematic but part of the feel-good package that's as larky and sprightly as everything else. Danny, who's black, keeps popping back into the picture, just in time to inject some soul into Pat and Tiffany's dance routine. Pat's Indian psychiatrist Dr. Patel (Anupam Kher), who first informs us he's bipolar and pleads with him vainly to take his meds, also turns out to be an ardent Eagles supporter, and Pat gets involved in a violent melee at the stadium defending Patel's Asians-for-Eagles gang from racist America-firsters.

The action comes to center on Pat Sr.'s betting sprees, which could make or break the restaurant he's opening, with major investment from his old pal and gambling adversary Randy (Paul Herman), and a ballroom dancing contest Tiffany persuades Pat Jr. to prepare for with her, as reward for her passing letters from him to Nikki. The climactic dance contest sequence is a triumph of physicality for the movie, which has been largely verbal up to here, and the contrast between the pro dance couples with their glitzy outfits and cold, precision moves and Pat and Tiffany's schizophrenic but basically warm and human routine is a wonderful metaphor for real and heartfelt versus fake, theatrical love.

Silver Linings Playbook, 122mm, which debuted at Toronto, opened in the USA 16 Nov. (limited) and 21 Nov. 2012 (wider, also in the UK). Fulfilling its Toronto popular award, in January 2013 it received one of the Academy Awards' nine Best Picture nominations.

[Chris Knipp]

I too share this feeling expressed by the Esquire CULTURE BLOG (http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/silver-linings-playbook-review-14775689?src=spr_TWITTER&spr_id=1456_5593364)writer Stephen Marche that one can't really explain rationally why one likes SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK so much, one just does, but it has to be in good part because of is the acting. Click on the link above and read the whole piece. Here is the most relevant part, the first half:


On paper, I am supposed to hate Silver Linings Playbook with every fiber of my being. It's a quirky romantic comedy, starring actors who became famous in blockbusters (Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence) trying to prove their acting chops by playing wounded, slightly daffy characters. There's a bunch of sappy side plots, too — a once-distant father who just wants to be close to his son, an Indian psychiatrist who's a rabid Philadelphia Eagles fan, a meth-head with a heart of gold. I should hate all of them. The plot hinges on a dancing competition, for chrissake. Even writing it down now, after having seen the film, I'm stunned that I didn't flee the theater. I'm still kind of amazed. How is it possible that I loved this movie?

Part of the answer has to be the acting. Screw Lincoln. This movie is easily the best ensemble performance of the year. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence both fully acquit themselves in roles that could easily have become unbearably grating. Robert De Niro plays an Italian-American father without the New York bluster, and it is one of my favorite of his performances, period. He's ground down and confused and tender and not tough at all. At the Toronto Film Festival, where this movie won the people's choice award, often handed out to Oscar sleepers like Slumdog Millionaire, the general consensus was that De Niro deserved Best Supporting Actor for his performance. It's a reasonable possibility. This movie also sees the return of Chris Tucker, in a sadly miniscule part, as the aforementioned meth-head with a heart of gold. The moment he appears onscreen, all you want to do is see more of him. Quentin Tarantino has recently claimed that he's only going to make three more movies. We can only hope that one of the three is set aside for Tucker. Robert De Niro doesn't get upstaged that often onscreen. Chris Tucker does it to him twice in this movie.


Read more: Silver Linings Playbook Review - Silver Linings Playbook Isn't the Quirky Comedy It Looks Like - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/silver-linings-playbook-review-14775689#ixzz2DIzXOULu

[tabuno]

Take Chris's plot summary, highlight his nicely woven sparkling adjectives that make his commentary glimmer with positive vibrations and shake it up with my more laudatory commendations and pour and you have a movie that is among the best of my personal favorites of the year and competing for a top ten spot of my all time best favorite movies. Maybe I'm biased here because of my background is in social work and mental illness and its insightful portrayal on the big screen is superior to what I've seen from any other movie including:

Elizabethtown (2005)
Helen (2009)
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
The Fisher King (1991)
He Was a Quiet Man (2007)
Seven Pounds (2008)
The Soloist (2008)
Girl, Interrupted (1999)
28 Days (2000)
Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
American Beauty (2000)
A Day of Wine and Rose (1962)

The tone of Pat from the movie is definitely isn't Hemingway and thus makes it the perfect movie, if you want to throw Hemingway out the
window.

[Chris Knipp]

I'm glad you like it. I wonder if you are also seeing THE SESSIONS? That too might appeal to your professional point of view and is good.

[cinemabon]

Silver Linings Playbook – directed by David O Russell

It only takes one person to spread misery (as we have seen repeatedly in the news), but, as the saying goes, it takes a village to undo all that is done in the name of violence – and that healing process comes from the kind of love and support family and friends freely provide. As the film opens, we are looking back, back over a life of conflict and uncertainty. The central character, a young man played by Brad Cooper, questions his past – Was my marriage ever a success? Did my father ever love me? Had I made a valuable contribution in my job? Questions like these drove this young man to madness or perhaps his life event trauma brought his madness to the surface. The choice, it seems is superfluous.

At once, we, the audience, recognize two things that are resolute as reoccurring film themes. One, the writer/director regards medicine as a failure to help cure those with mental illness. This is an easy premise to believe as we have seen people spend a lifetime on medication and they are unchanged, in so many examples that they are incalculable. The second premise, established early, is that no matter what happens to us, the healing that must follow any trauma in our lives must be through the help of others. This acknowledgement that it takes a village – a village to nurture, support and to encourage relationships and help them grow – is the foundation that allows us to build communities. We are a united people, not just in name, but by nature, as this instinct is a vital part of humanity. It is that quality that gives us a basic understanding of the rules which make us civil.

Brad Cooper plays Pat Solitano, Jr. a man who cannot form a single thought without going back to the incident that changed his life forever. In a series of flashbacks, we discover that he came home from work early and caught his wife with a co-worker from the high school were he’d been an assistant (although his job title is never explained, it isn’t necessary). His wedding CD was playing (“My Cherie Amour” by Stevie Wonder) at the time. This becomes a trigger to his pain which results in rage when he hears the music in his head. The music is a haunting refrain in his life. In the opening shot, when Pat comes up to receive his medication, he “cheeks” the meds, spits them out and moves on. Pat later belittles the use of meds (“They make me feel dopy.”) As the film continues, we find out that this is Pat’s last day in the court-ordered mental hospital where he has spent the last eight months of his life. His mother has arrived with release papers and he is going home. Yet for us and for Pat, Jr., his troubles have only begun. No one, it seems, is eager to have Pat back among them, except his mother.

Once he arrives at home, Pat finds out his father (Robert DeNiro as Pat, Sr.) has been fired from his job and is running a book-making operation out of their house in Philadelphia. Being an Eagles fan, Pat, Sr. figures he can win by betting on football and make enough money to support his wife while also keeping their home. All of this makes for some rather uncomfortable confrontations and the film nearly flounders in the first thirty minutes from continual conflict. Pat runs into an old friend while out jogging and he is invited to dinner. Meanwhile, he wakes in the middle of the night, makes a big scene with his parents all over the fact that “A farewell to Arms” by Ernst Hemmingway is a disappointment to him as a novel(his wife taught this book at school). Pat is trying to study everything about his wife. He figures if he can only regain his wife’s good graces all will be well and they can pick up where they left off. But this journey is frustrating and lonely. Not even his psychiatrist, played well by Indian actor Anupam Kher, can get through to Pat.

When Pat shows up for the dinner, dressed in an Eagles’ jersey, the hosts opening express their scorn with his choice of attire. However, the friend’s wife (Julia Styles) has invited her sister, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who recently lost her cop/husband in an auto accident. Pat is disgusted by this “arrangement” and nearly walks out. To Pat’s surprise, Tiffany is nearly as unstable as he is when he finds out, as she runs through a litany of tried and failed drug therapies (more dis on mental health drugs), that she has mental health problems as well. For the first time since the incident surrounding his wife’s infidelity, Pat finds another woman intriguing. Tiffany is unusual. Her openness and honest about her failings are refreshing to Pat, who must confront his own demons in therapy. When Pat goes out for his usual jog the next day and happens to run past Tiffany’s house, she runs into the street and confronts him. The two are off to a cantankerous relationship that could easily end if it were not for Tiffany’s insistence to pursue Pat. Gradually, the fondness for one another blossoms into a healing experience for both and for the families involved.

“Silver Linings Playbook” is a film that is filled with tour de force levels of acting, mostly derived from a tight, well-written script and some expert direction. Every scene is shot in very tight confined spaces to the point that we almost feel as if we’re intruding into these people’s lives. Several scenes jump out as being extremely dramatic, including two attic scenes, one with a speech by Robert DeNiro, easily his best performance in over a decade and worthy of Best Supporting Actor. Even Jacki Weaver as the unobtrusive but supportive mother is a pleasant surprise. But it is the dynamism between Brad Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence that is so superior to anything on the silver screen this holiday season. Director David Russell, whose previous work did not entice me, this time has actors who brought their game and deliver. Russell is able bring out levels of acting we rare see in films but whose levels are so superior they cannot be ignored. This is what most actors aspire to when they wish to proudly point back over a career and say, “I was in that film.” Beautifully shot, edited, written and directed; if you see one film that is Academy Award worthy this holiday season, you must see “Silver Linings Playbook.” Highly recommended and Oscar worthy.

[Chris Knipp]

I agree and you give it a fitting tribute. It's nice the way Russell keeps things simple so the acting and the as you say tightly written script shine forth, and it's an unadulterated pleasure. Some people think this is corny and cliched (as the the representation of mental illness) but I don't agree. To begin with, I don't think what's wrong with these two people is exactly what I'd call "mental illness" to begin with. It's true the film doesn't go into much depth on such issues, but if we dont' take everything too literally, it all works.

What about THE SESSIONS? Maybe not available in your area so you'll have to wait for the DVD. I hope you can also see AMOUR.

[cinemabon]

Chris, if you recommend it, then I'm off to the races (rushing to the theater)! Hope you had a great Christmas with family and friends. Look forward to award season coming up. Some good films finish out a good year in cinema.

Bonne chance, mon ami.

[Chris Knipp]

Merci, et bonne année!.

[Chris Knipp]

The French are taking to the custom lately of re-titling English language movies with simpler English titles, but keeping it in English. Example this year was BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL which they retitled for French release INDIAN HOTEL. Now SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (which is very idiomatic) they're releasing in France as HAPPINESS THERAPY. That works. In fact I rather like that. It provides a sort of insight into the screenplay.

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/2667/happiness20therapy.jpg

[cinemabon]

So Brad has become a Bon Vivant

[Chris Knipp]

I don't think it's that kind of happiness. More like the emotional kind. Disturbed man with rage issues finds love, becomes sane. Which is the weakest element of the plot, it's insinuation of this simplistic solution to mental troubles.

[tabuno]

In my counseling, I found that best way to sanity is for a person to "act," on a passion, and find love in an deeply open and authentic manner.

[oscar jubis]

Thank you for your inspirational insight. I bet you've helped a lot of people with your clinical practice. Let's hope that government at all levels recognizes the importance of all kinds of mental health services to the well-being of our society. I also enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook.

[Chris Knipp]

Action, passion, and love
In my counseling, I found that best way to sanity is for a person to "act," on a passion, and find love in an deeply open and authentic manner.

Yes, I agree that this is the wise and humane approach of a good therapist. However the question -- more an objection of others than mine personally, but one I need to banish maybe through a second viewing, is whether this summary of the movie is valid:
Disturbed man with rage issues finds love, becomes sane. Which is the weakest element of the plot, it's insinuation of this simplistic solution to mental troubles. If Pat is bi-polar and prone to violent rages and has been enough of a danger to himself and others to be incarcerated, in his case are action, passion, and love by themselves a sufficient path to sanity? Doesn't the treatment have to be adjusted to fit the patient? I don't bring this up out of any dislike of the movie. Personally I thought Russell hit a home run even if SILVER LININGS is simpler and less witty than earlier movies of his like FLIRTING WITH DISASTER and THREE KINGS, which I admit to having liked better. I take it the "silver linings playbook" concept is a kind of cognitive therapy? But we're not advising pat to give up taking his meds in favor of pursuing action, passion, and love, are we? And in fact he decides to take his meds, I believe, after an initial flirting with the disaster of not taking them.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK is a highly enjoyable film but one that contains elements that could be troubling.

There is a discussion of the issues we are looking at in a piece in a recent issue (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/movies-and-the-mind/201302/accuracy-distortion-and-truth-in-silver-linings-playbook) of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY: "Accuracy, Distortion and Truth In Silver Linings Playbook." The author wisely points out that movies shouldn't be taken by psychologists or psychotherapists as literal treatments of clinical issues: they're movies. The superficial summary of the author's point is
The Best Picture Oscar-nominated Silver Linings Playbook is an excellent example of a film that is at once fairly accurate about a number of elements related to mental health, misleading about other elements, and yet ultimately true to its own artistic vision, benefiting the audience in the end. I think this may be more helpful and satisfying to my doubts than the nitpicking of Richard Brody of The New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/12/silver-linings-encore.html), who went back to see SILVER LININGS again to test his dislike of it and admits mistaking a fact, but still debunks the movie in ways that don't seem well-argued to me.

Skip Dine Young, who wrote the PSYCHOLOGY TODAY article, praises the movie's depiction of a family that's coming apart, but points out that the clinical diagnoses of Pat and Tiffany are inaccurate and unlikely. Young says:
the film wraps up the pieces much too neatly, suggesting that Pat and Tiffany’s successful performance in a dance contest and their passionate love for each other are enough to diffuse all of the simmering psychological and interpersonal tensions. Finally, the portrayal of the therapist, Dr. Patel (Anupam Kher) is problematic. He intentionally provokes Pat by playing a song that reminds him of a traumatic event, and later in the film, he completely abandons his professional role in favor of joining with Pat as a maniacal Eagles fan. Brody also objects strenuously to the appearance of the therapist at the game, which he thinks, not without reason, simplistically suggests that Pat only can find the therapist (a darkskinned foreigner with an Indian accent) to be "okay" if he's an avid Eagles fan, like them.

But Young wisely advises us to cut SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK some slack because it's a movie, and because it succeeds so well as a rom-com with an otherwise conventional plot combining a too-needy female and a commitment-averse male by combining such an unusual female and male, both of them (if you'll forgive my simplistic language) certifiable nut cases (but also thoroughly appealing ones), she a woman who has slept with everybody in her office, he who has sent his ex wife's lover to the hospital in a fit or rage, both of them lacking normal social skills. The story may be a bit unrealistic, but it's a movie. And it offers us hope.

[cinemabon]

Oh, no! I thought it was based on true events! What a foolish presumption on my part!

[tabuno]

I have been counseling clients in my capacity as a clinical social worker for more than five years, including suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, bi-polar, borderline personality disorder, substance dependency, domestic violence, divorce. There is much more that goes into assessment, diagnosis and treatment of each individual client and I'm still learning. No movie and even documentary can provide the unique circumstances and treatment regimen of any client. What we are provided in this movie are themes and directions that treatment may go and contribute to the successful outcomes of a great number of clients under similar circumstances. This movie is entertaining and offers a general appreciation and awareness of the topic of mental illness.

[Chris Knipp]

It's based on a 2010 novel (http://www.amazon.com/Silver-Linings-Playbook-Novel/dp/0374532281) of the same name by a writer called Matthew Quick. He is a writer of young adult fiction, like Stephen Chbosky (THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER).