Fear Goes Dancing // Silver Linings Playbook Movie Review

 Silver Linings Playbook has been out since last November.  I have resisted seeing this movie all the while.  I made it through the Holiday Season avoiding it.  Then I navigated my way through Oscar time ducking it.  But Thursday this was the only movie even remotely worth seeing at a multiplex that boasts twenty-one screens (January obviously isn't the only dumping ground bad movies). Everything about it from the title to the premise screamed feel-good-inspirational to me, which means I normally walk the other way (one day I'll tell you why).  In light of the dearth of competition I held my nose, bought the ticket and succumbed to the inevitable.  

The good news: Jennifer Lawrence deserved her Oscar as the young widow, and the rest of the cast and crew deserved the nominations they received (you could make a strong argument for Robert De Niro for best supporting actor).  Bradley Cooper is believable playing a man suffering from bipolar disorder, even if it is a somewhat sanitized Hollywood take on it.  Director David O. Russell's often off beat song choices make up for the totally derivative and predictable sound track on his last film The Fighter.  Over all I liked this better than that earlier film, and found many of the individual elements in Silver Linings Playbook to be very well done and pitch perfect.

Until you put them all together.

Here's the problem.  I'm not a mental health care professional, but my vocation brings me in contact at times with people who suffer, and these poor souls really do suffer, from bipolar disorder, OCD, occasionally a person effected by paranoid schizophrenia crossed our doorway.  For the most severe cases these afflictions keep them from living anything approaching a normal life.  To hold down a job is close to impossible.  To maintain a stable relationship is equally difficult.  Many are like the main characters, otherwise able bodied adults living at home with their parents with out a job or prospects.  While I don't believe that the filmmakers are dishonest or have any bad intent (all the characters are three dimensional people treated with sensitivity), there is still a bit of unreality surrounding the story, that would have worked better if they had followed a more conventional tack. 

Cooper plays a former teacher who has probably suffered from bipolar disorder most of his life, but is only diagnosed after he catches his wife in the shower with one of her co-workers and does what most husbands would do in that situation, whether they were emotionally unbalanced or not; he beats the snot out of the guy.  After eight months in a mental hospital (part of a plea bargain that keeps him out of jail) he comes home to live with his parents.  A close friend invites him over for dinner, and oh yeah, they invite the sister-in-law (Lawrence) who is recently widowed and dealing with her pain by bedding every every Tom, Dick and Suzie she can get her hands on.  After a rude introduction they share their anti-depressant med history.  We know that true love is just a Zoloft away.

Cooper's father (De Niro) is a bookie who is more than a touch obsessive compulsive (see, it runs in the family).  They all want something. Cooper wants his wife back, De Niro wants out of the bookie business and open a restaurant and Lawrence wants to participate in a dance contest.  With out going into details (mainly because by now most of you have probably already seen the movie) these simple desires intersect and contradict and come to a neat resolution.

In the end this is a hard movie to give a firm recommendation to.  There were parts I really loved, and that made me regret my decision to skip this one for so long.  The sound track matches songs to situations perfectly, and often left me saying things like, "I know the artist, but what's the song?"  As anyone who knows me can tell you, if a movie stumps me on a song or an artist, it's done something.  The sequence where Cooper obsessively ransacks the house looking for his lost wedding video with Led Zeppelin's "What is and What Should Never Be" as the back drop is brilliant.  Jeniffer Lawrence, who was probably 20 when this was filmed, shows astonishing maturity in a role that many actresses in their thirties can't pull off.  De Niro, is well, De Niro; tough, but he shows a real tenderness as the father struggling to make things right with his son.

On the other hand, the neatness of the resolution and the unspoken message that two emotionally broken people can heal each other left me shaking my head.  I could point out that there are a lot of plot twists that are telegraphed, but that really didn't bother me because the performances were so good.  It is, as with most mainstream Hollywood movies, that we had to have the "silver lining," the unmitigated happy ending that belies the truth, that left me a bit cold.

The truth is that both of them have a hard road ahead of them, and two volatile personalities together usually leads to more explosions.  For those who suffer from emotional problems the solution is not that there is a cure, but that it is manageable.  While autism is not mental illness, what made Rain Man so good was the acknowledgement that the Dustin Hoffman character was never going to change.  It was Tom Cruse as the "normal" brother who had to change and accept his brother for who he was.  That ring of truth is missing from Silver Linings Playbook.

So, if I was forced to give a recommendation, it would be to see it.  Individual parts are, at times, exceptional and shouldn't be missed.  But put together as a whole I felt it missed the mark, by that much.