There have been 5 films pretty much dominating the awards this season, and Silver Linings Playbook is one of them. I'll try review all 5, except, eeesssh...can I sit through Lincoln? I'm not sure. Although I did find out that John Wilkes Booth was the 19th century equivalent of Brad Pitt, which is interesting...like Brad Pitt assassinating Obama. Enough rambling. Silver Linings Playbook has received 8 Academy Awards nominations (achieving the rare feat of being nominated in all four acting categories), four Golden Globes Awards nominations, with Lawrence winning Best Actress, 3 BAFTA nominations, any many more. So my expectations were high. And boy, did it deliver. Emotional, troubling, funny, romantic, heart warming, random, dance-drama-romantic-comedy film, tackling the tough subject of mental illness head on.
PAT NOT DOING SO GOOD
The film opens with Pat, the handsome Bradley Cooper (although, personally, I think he looks better with longer hair). He is in a mental institute, and is given some pills. It's creepily similar to the start of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Pat has just been released due to the persuasion of his mum. He was in there because he snapped and nearly beat a man to death; the same man he walked in on having sex with his wife in the shower. His wife is called Nikki. By the end of this film, you will hate the name Nikki. Pat is convinced he can get Nikki back. He runs in a bin bag, he reads her entire teaching syllabus. He convinces his dad he is getting better, with this important gem:
EXCELSIOR: 'Take all the bullshit and find a silver lining'.
At first I thought 'Excelsiar' sounded King Arthur related, and got all excited. EXCALIBUS!
Pat is clearly not okay. He is unstable, earnestly deluded, desperate for news of his wife and refusing to acknowledge his bi-polar condition. It's sad to watch. He smashes things up when he hears his wedding song, he won't take his meds, he complains about Ernest Hemingway. He wears a Philadelphia Eagle's sweater to a dinner party. The Philadelphia Eagle's are also a big part of this film. At the dinner party he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a widow. She is bat-shit insane. Seriously. In a really passive aggressive, eyes full of loathing and danger kind of way.
She really scares me in this movie. So unpredictable. When she says to him, after their first meeting and when she basically forced him to walk her home at emotional gun point, 'I haven't dated since before my marriage, so I don't know how this goes', I felt Pat's confusion and horror. RUN PAT. RUN NOW!!!
Anyway, they start an awkward friendship full of inappropriate conversations, uncomfortable shouting and unpredictable behaviour, due to Tiffany continually ambushing him on his runs. At first Pat calls her a 'loyal married to a dead guy slut', but his therapist convinces him Nikki will think he is a better person if he makes friends with her. Woah, inappropriate, manipulative suggestion, therapist. Nikki has a restraining order of him. She watched him nearly strangle her lover to death with a bloody shower hose, which we are shown in horrifying flashbacks. To make things worse, she was cheating on him ANYWAY. I think Pat should move on. I certainly think Nikki should move on, even if it is Bradley Cooper. These two clearly were not good for each other, as shown when Pat says 'we wouldn't talk to each other for a couple of weeks after fights, but that's normal'.
FRIEND DATES
They go on a friend date on Halloween. Very apt, considering Tiffany dresses like a goth. I was expecting there to be a funny line where someone says to her, 'I like your costume', but there wasn't. There is an amusing bit where Pat orders cereal to make sure she knows it isn't a date. Tiffany promises she can deliver a letter to Nikki through her sister. I SMELL A RAT. RUN PAT! But he has to enter a DANCE CONTEST with her first. MANIPULATION OF THE HIGHEST ORDER! She eventually gives him a letter from Nikki, which says she needs to SEE something in order to prove that Pat has changed. Again, I smell a rat. A crazy, all black wearing, manipulative rat. The dancing isn't going great. Pat's friend from the mental institute tells him to 'black it up'. Pat says he doesn't know what that means. The friend says, you know what that means. And it's true. In relation to dancing, we all know what that means. GIVE IT SOME SOUL, BROTHER. The dancing causes Pat to collapse in exhaustion on his bed, and to knock all the horrible Nikki books off- yey! positive symbolism! Get rid of that horrible Nikki from your head and dance your troubles away. Was she horrible? She did cheat on him, but he also did have mental problems, accused her of embezzling money, used to be fat, and nearly killed someone in front of her. Grey, grey area. There are a lot of grey-area-dwelling characters in this film, which is what makes it so compelling.
GAMBLE GAMBLE GAMBLE
Side plot: Pat's dad clearly has OCD and a gambling problem. He is betting all his money on the Eagle's, and is convinced Pat has to watch the game with him to win. De Niro's clearly obsessive, troubled, desperate performance is heart breaking, because it's clear that he is just as damaged as Pat, only probably can't change it. It also creates a clever history of where Pat gets his problems from.
Pat and Tiffany's dance contest happens to be on the same day as an Eagle's game. The dad can get all his lost gambling money back if the Eagle's win, and if Pat and Tiffany score 5/10 in the contest. Against professionals. I really liked this element of the film; you know they have no chance in hell of winning so don't expect the miracles of boring cliche dance films, you are just wiling for them to get a poor to mediocre score. It is refreshing. GO OUT THERE AND PERFORM YOUR AVERAGE BEST, GUYS! The deal is brokered in a passive aggressive confrontation between the dad and Tiffany, the two greatest burdens/saviours in Pat's life, its hard to tell which. The dad's mentally unstable status is cemented when he says Tiffany is 'making a lot of sense'. She isn't. There is a terrifying moment where Tiffany says, 'I'm Tiffany, by the way', and glares around the room with eyes like that of a caged, unhinged lion. How was she married for 3 years? Who was he?!? Anyway, Tiffany says her and his parents have to lie to Pat and tell him Nikki will be at the dance contest. We also find out the mum was the one who told Tiffany how to ambush Pat on the runs. WOAH! The puppet master has been revealed! The wizard behind the curtain, secretly controlling and plotting the lives of her unhinged, damaged, Eagle loving relatives. She is like the Godfather.
Pat realises it was Tiffany who wrote the letter when he sees the line 'if you look at the signs', the same line she has been angrily shouting at him all evening.
DANCE CONTEST
The ending has to be the most perfect conclusion to the film I could have imagined. Firstly, visually, the tone is very different. The main part of the movie is set in the dingy, yellow and brown interiored, grey suburbia with moody, melancholic music. The dance contest takes part in a grand, glittering hall full of flashing blue, green and pink lights with smooth, emotional, jazzy music. Anyway, when they get there, Tiffany freaks out because she sees Nikki. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, NIKKI. They perform the dance after some coaxing from Pat, and it's great. Seductive, fun, just the right level of surprisingly good but still not amazing. There are some cool shots where you see Tiffany dancing from Pat's point of view.
The lighting is all pink and seductive and calming. They are wearing white, which is some clever symbolism, like this is their chance to leave their past behind and become reborn into happiness and light and love. Getting deep here, guys. They get 5/10. YEY! I have never been so happy to see a 5/10.
PERFECT ROM-COM ENDING
Pat goes to see Nikki, and Tiffany runs away. He whispers in Nikki's ear, then leaves. Its amazing this is the same woman who he was neurotically obsessing over and who caused him to nearly murder someone. It shows how much he has altered for the better, which is nice. The dad tells him 'I'm not sure if Nikki ever loved you, but she doesn't now'. Harsh but true, harsh but true. Take that stellar perspective and apply it to your ridiculous gambling habits. Tiffany starts running and I just REALLY WANT him to shout 'HEY!' and appear out of no where, her signature stalker runner move, and he DOES and its PERFECT and he says he loves her and I don't know why because she is CRAZY in a MANIPULATIVE, SELFISH WAY but it's SO CUTE.
The film ends with the whole family together. Pat and Tiffany are very happy. The dad is still gambling, which brings a nice bit of realism to the film, although it is still sad. The acting in this film is amazing- you forget how famous all the cast are, and instead see them as a real family, and start to feel for them like worried friends watching from the sidelines. Cooper and Lawrence are perfect. Tiffany isn't a super likeable character, but Lawrence makes her kind of likeable, so you start to feel sorry for her and want her to be happy. De Niro is perfect. My only problem with this film is that there are too many close ups of people staring moodily into space at the beginning, which makes it a bit too depressing. Straying into Twilight territory. However, film's can't often pull off sadness and laughter, but when they do, like in In Bruges, they become the SILVER LINING of all the awful, awful generic rom coms that flood our cinemas, and this is exactly what this movie has provided. It ends with a brilliant quote, that seems to perfectly sum up the film:
The world will break your heart 10 ways till Sunday,
and there is craziness inside everyone,
but I love Sundays.
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