AT THE MOVIES

With

David Begelman

“Silver Linings Playbook:” Mental Illness As Cinematic Blessing

David O. Russell’s new film about a couple beleaguered by psychiatric problems seems to have delighted most critics reviewing it. It received a 91% favorable rating from them on the “Rotten Tomatoes” website, precisely the same percentage of enthusiasm accorded the film by the average public moviegoer. Evidently, the movie is an enormously popular one with a huge majority of those seeing it. 

Pundits feel it’s slated for Academy Awards. As far as nominations go, it would be the first film in 31 years marked for winning in all four acting categories: Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence as Best Actor and Actress, and Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver in Best Supporting Actor and Actress roles. The last movie to draw a similar accolade was the 1981 “Reds.”

Not that awards should matter all that much. They beg a huge question about the taste of officials who confer them. Jennifer Lawrence just garnered a Golden Globe Award for her role in Russell’s film, true. But Ben Affleck’s “Argo” received one over “Lincoln.” This doesn’t leave me thinking: “Did I miss something?” but “I wonder how many Golden Globe referees have it in for Steven Spielberg.” 

On the other side of things, several minority critics have trashed “Silver Linings Playbook” as “the year’s most artificial movie…filled with faked case histories,” and a plot that is “utterly ridiculous.”

Like Tevya the dairyman in “Fiddler On the Roof,” I would opt for a more conciliatory note: both opinions are right. It depends on which half of the film you’re watching.

The movie, about the relationship between a patient consigned to the care of his parents after discharge from a mental hospital, and a youngish widow as perceptive as she is unstable, is itself a case of divided personality. Its first half exudes genuine charm laced with some well-crafted dialogue between Pat (Cooper) and Tiffany (Lawrence), combining humor with their instability.

Cooper’s portrayal of an essentially likeable guy cursed with bipolar disorder has to be the most realistic—and humorous—depiction of the condition in movie history. Between episodes of normalcy and contrition, he flies into sudden rages, becomes delusional and agitated without provocation, and has a hard time accommodating to the demands of the realities around him.

Because Pat refuses to take his medication, treatment sessions with his shrink, Dr. Patel (played by Anupam Kher in an understandably restrained manner, given Pat’s turbulent mental state) is a lesson in how ineffective office analysis can be when confronted with conditions impervious to reason.

Lawrence’s portrayal of Tiffany, also a mental patient mourning the loss of her spouse, has a personality disorder that makes the sparks fly when the two interact, despite their mutual attraction. Both the screenplay and the two performers are at their best in the first half of the movie when they have at each other in a virtual symphony of clashing temperaments.

Half way through the film the action gets encumbered by silly and extraneous narratives involving many others including a parent, Pat Senior (De Niro). He has a chronic OCD problem, a long-suffering spouse, Dolores (Weaver), a gambling problem and some magical thinking. The latter involves how arranging a dance contest between his son and Tiffany will come to affect the outcome of a game played by his beloved Philadelphia Eagles football team. To add to all the fuss, the screenplay includes a mental patient buddy of Pat’s, Danny (Chris Tucker) who contrives to teach Pat and Tiffany how to jive up the number they intend to perform in the contest.

Then there is the addition of a problematic relationship between Ronnie (John Ortiz) and Veronica (Julia Stiles), not to mention the one between Pat and his ex-wife, Nikki (Brea Bee), as well as the occasional arrival of a cop (Dash Mihok) to prevent the outbreak of violence, violation of a restraining order or a donnybrook among macho members of separate football teams. It’s a drawn-out and overly complicated narrative detracting from the tone set initially by the two principals.

The film tends to become formulaic as Pat and Tiffany draw closer together. Their rapprochement loses the spice it generated earlier as they both morph into seeming normalcy. George Bernard Shaw warned against the pitfalls of the happy ending in his Sequel to “Pygmalion.” Maybe it’s better at times that characters on the stage, screen or in literature stay a little dotty, if only to avoid the humdrum, or—horrors!—the platitudinous.