Silver Linings Playbook is less about mental illness and more about coping processes. As with most David O. Russell films, this one is straight on narrative with drips of exposition, a solid style that allows the audience to gauge Pat (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) through a progressive tale rather than being immediately privy to their previous transgressions – lest we too being our relationship with Tiffany by viewing her as a “loyal, married-to-a-dead-guy slut,” or with Pat by seeing him as a man with a wealth of unresolved rage.
Instead, we see him trying to “remake” himself and her as a woman in mourning. Russell’s introduction on his main protagonists also allows us to judge the supporting actors just as equally, noting that those who are exposed as a bit off kilter or left-of-center are more pleasant to be around than the culturally accepted Veronica (Julia Stiles), Officer Keogh (Dash Mihok), or Ronnie (John Ortiz).
We also tend to understand where his delusional moments and battle with bipolar disorder stem from: his father Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro). Pat Sr. is an avid Eagles fan, a borderline degenerate gambler, and a bookmaker who places his money in the hands of superstition, serendipity, and luck rather than anything numerical. The odds of NFL teams winning on the road falls secondary – or even tertiary – to Pat Jr.’s presence in the house, what jerseys are being worn, and the position of chairs. But he copes; this meticulousness is never blatantly exposed as OCD – or something else – but we see it and we can embrace it because we are uninfluenced by his plight. As if it were a home movie, Silver Linings looks unblinkingly and manically at family dysfunction and cultural judgment.
DeNiro, in his venture back from slapstick, drove-drawing comedy, is solid as Pat Sr., a man unsure how to communicate with his son sans an Eagles game on the television. Everything is about sports because they are unsure how to fluidly move around each other. In truth, they completely defy the Nash Equilibrium, refusing to move for the other, preferring to encounter each other head on without concern for the other party. They are the same person, just separated by thirty years.
Jacki Weaver is endearing as Dolores, Pat Jr.’s mom, and it’s difficult to tell if she’s blissfully ignorant or perpetually worn down. And Lawrence plays the most versatile character in the film, at once depressed and brooding, at another allowing the eek of a smile that portends an honest connection someone else, before she falls back into the role of temporary shill for men looking to get their rocks off with a woman who wants nothing more than to feel something besides loss.
Of course, the temporary trysts hardly quell the feeling of loss for any longer than it takes for her visitors to don pants, but this is Tiffany’s plight – one exacerbated by a family that is so aware of her potential problems that they illuminate them at every chance they get. Her family and Delores have a similar plan to cope in that they all want their progeny to be happy; the difference is the practice. Dolores attempts to whitewash everything, while Tiffany’s family makes her problems overtly obvious.
Neither works to perfection, and this seems to be the point. Russell employs the polemic and theorizes that in a social system lacking gray area, there are no solution – unless you dance!
And dance Tiffany and Pat do. They do it for different reasons, and the denouement of the film runs as you would expect it to, but Russell doesn’t attempt to trick us or lead us in a different direction. He bonds us with characters whose likability is suspect to everyone around them. He too dismisses the safe bets and places money on the long shot, and when it comes in, we can’t deny that it’s better this way.
In a way, Russell is bunking up the “Mental Health Genre,” one played with by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (it’s probably not coincidental that R.P. McMurphy and Pat end up in a mental hospital for the same reason – first aggression and then as a way to avoid going to prison), Clockwork Orange, or the less erudite The Dream Team. Like those films, Silver Linings looks at the social construction of mental health and the conjoined construction of its patients, but it also posits that mental health is not cultivated through isolation, a moment made ever-so-clear by the ultimate relationship between Pat Jr. and his therapist Dr. Cliff Patel. They are patient and doctor as well as fans of the same football team. And while mental health issues can’t be simply remedied by camaraderie, an irony is exposed by both men’s infatuation with the intelligent application of violence.
Both the sane and insane, the crazed and normal, the level and off-kilter form a bond based on partnership, not reclusiveness of isolation.
