Silver Linings Playbook: Study it Well

 Sometimes, when it comes to enjoying a film, you have to learn to appreciate the journey—especially if you're pretty sure you're aware of the destination ahead of time.  To be a successful filmmaker doesn't necessarily entail breaking new ground or unleashing revelation with each and every release; sometimes a talented filmmaker also has to play the part of magician, utilizing sleight of hand to lull the audience into a spell where they either don't realize or are unconcerned that what they're taking in is, for all intents and purposes, simple convention.

For the first half of his acclaimed career, David O. Russell was known for telling unconventional stories (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees), but sometime during the 7-year layoff after Huckabees, something changed.  The result was a familiar underdog story in The Fighter, which was nevertheless executed with such skill that it was able to rise above its familiarity to the tune of 7 Oscar nominations and 2 golden statuettes.  In a world filled with Rockies and Rudies and Cinderella Men, Russell tried to convince us that there was something different about Micky Ward and we believed him.

Silver Linings Playbook is Russell's romp through the romantic comedy convention.  Yes, the meet-cute does involve a playful back and forth between the emotionally disturbed Pat Solitano Jr. (Bradley Cooper) and the emotionally disturbed Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) where they banter about all the medications that have been forced upon them in the past (Klonopin?  Check.  Trazodone?  Yup.  Cymbalta?  Obviously); and yes, their interactions swap out romance for unfiltered knee-jerk verbal swipes, but for the most part, the marketers haven't mislead you by putting forth Silver Linings Playbook as your standard boy meets girl, boy loses girl…well, you know the rest of the equation.

The equation starts with Pat's release from a mental institution, his home for the last 8 months since walking in on his wife mid-affair and beating her lover within an inch of his life.  The assault cost Pat his teaching job, his reputation and his wife, Nikki, whose subsequent restraining order has done nothing to cut through Pat's delusion that they're still very much in love and she's simply waiting for him to get his act together.  "Excelsior," Pat frequently declares—the motto of the Baltimore institution from which he has very likely prematurely checked out.  It serves as a reminder to remain positive, to look for the silver lining.

Easier said than done as the environment into which Pat is released is more conducive to relapse than recovery.  Pat's mother, Dolores (Jackie Weaver), though kind and caring, is powerless when it comes to dealing with his latent anger issues, whereas his father, Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro), banned from Lincoln Financial Field for recurring assault & battery, hinges the success of his entire bookmaking venture on the luck he believes his youngest son brings to the Philadelphia Eagles.  The only other relationship that would appear to set a healthy template for Pat's recovery would be that of his best friend Ronnie (John Ortiz), whose seemingly ideal marriage to Veronica (Julia Stiles) belies an increasing sense of physical and emotional suffocation from the overwhelmed first-time father.

It's through Ronnie and Veronica that Pat is introduced to Tiffany, a boomeranger with a passion for dancing who returned home after the grief over her cop husband's death manifested itself in wholesale sex with her co-workers (all of them) and a subsequent firing.  It's damaged goods meets crackpot and they're each convinced that the other one is crazier. Nevertheless, Pat and Tiffany form a bond that could only be forged between outcasts, those who find empathy through the mutual pride and shame of having lived through a meltdown in the core of their being.

On top of that, Tiffany says she can do Pat a favor—deliver a letter he wrote to his estranged wife that details his steps to recovery and his attempt to embrace the "Excelsior" mindset.  All she asks in return for sneaking around Nikki's restraining order is Pat's help with a "dance thing" she has upcoming in December.  It's a competition, you see.  A couples dancing competition.  Tiffany needs a partner.

It won't take a cartographer to decipher the path that Pat and Tiffany's relationship will follow, but with David O. Russell navigating as writer/director, the journey becomes engrossing not because of where it's going, but because of what it looks like getting there.  Silver Linings Playbook is in many ways a connect the dots romantic comedy, but the lines drawn to get from Point A to Point B are delightfully and bizarrely skewed due to the broken protagonists at the center of the film.

It's to Russell's credit that despite the inherent danger of basing a film around mentally unstable characters, the film never falls prey to the clichés of cinematic crazy—there are no hints of Tiffany as a manic pixie dream girl, no sense that the "crazy people" really have everything figured out, no pop psychology or psychiatric mumbo jumbo that make the road to recovery from a mental breakdown seem easy or run-of-the-mill.  Russell seems acutely aware of the freshness of his characters' wounds, crafting a mood of tender egos that gives the exchanges between Pat and Tiffany, Pat and his father, or Pat and…well, the world, really, a potentiality for explosion.

There is respect paid to the world created in Silver Linings Playbook, a world that most closely resembles our own in how it depicts all its inhabitants as normal only in how abnormal everybody is.  This is not a film where one off-kilter character re-discovers how to indoctrinate him or herself back into the cookie cutter fold, but instead a film where everybody is off-kilter to one degree or another and pressing forward anyway because they realize they exist in a world where perfect exists only in context.  Pat and Tiffany may be the only characters in the film medicated and checking in weekly with a therapist, but everyone around them has a tick, a nervous habit, a problem they're trying to avoid or one with which they're dealing inadequately.

It's this recognition of the varying degrees of “fucked-up-edness” within everyone and the dynamic performances brought forth by the stellar cast that make the motley crew of Silver Linings Playbook infinitely fascinating in both an uplifting and cautionary tale sort of way. This is definitely a film you will want to watch in order to discover how to take a centuries-old archetype (in this instance, the romantic comedy) and imbue it with a realism that current audiences can relate to as if the story type is a fresh invention. Russell bends to his characters, which can be a difficult skill to master. And the actors consequently find a place to live within them and flourish because the room to do so is there. Picking up the ins-and-outs of this interplay will get you some good results in your own work. Study it well.