By Warning: This review contains spoilers.
There’s a moment in the first half of David O Russell’s 2012 opus Silver Linings Playbook when the screenwriter-director gives his whole game away, making the movie ‒ which tackles the serious issue of mental illness – come across as a simple, albeit sometimes aggressive, romantic comedy.
It occurs when the bipolar Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper), a former high school teacher who has just been released from a care facility and moves back to the family home to recuperate, awakens his father Pat Snr (Robert De Niro) and mother Dolores (Jackie Weaver) at 4am to deliver a ranting tirade about the ending of Ernest Hemmingway’s 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms, which he finds particularly annoying.
Not that he reads the book in the right state of mind to begin with – basically he is trying to familiarise himself with the material his estranged wife Nikki (Brea Bree) was teaching her students when they were still together.
After ingesting the story’s conclusion, in which the female protagonist dies in a Swiss hospital after childbirth complications, Pat angrily throws the novel through the attic window and rushes downstairs to complain about its conclusion to his bewildered parents.
Noting that there’s a boring part in the book when the lead couple ‒ US medic Frederic Henry and English nurse Catherine Barkley who meet in Italy during WWI ‒go out dancing one night after their arrival in Switzerland, the hyped up son maintains he’s not particularly bothered by the boredom generated by this moment given the fictional couple are, at the time, happy.
“You think he (Hemmingway) ends it there?” Pat rhetorically asks his perplexed folks, who remain tucked in bed.
“No! He writes another ending – she dies dad.
“I mean the world is hard enough as it is guys. Can’t somebody say: ‘Hey, let’s be positive, let’s have a good end to the story?’”
In effect this is exactly the attitude Russell embraces in his adaptation of Matthew Quick’s The Silver Linings Playbook, with the film having the happiest of endings despite the mental dysfunction which is infused throughout its narrative.
While some may think this is not such a bad thing, it’s difficult to deny it does come at a price, that being a negation of any dramatic tensions (read: edge) which have hitherto been established.
If one was to pinpoint the problem with Russell’s approach, it’s that the whole thing becomes utterly predictable – particularly the syrupy denouement, in which all the loose ends are neatly tied and love conquers all.
During the course of the film the obviously unhinged Pat comes across Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), an almost-as-loose police widow who agrees to pass on his note to Nikki, with whom he is still infatuated.
There is a catch though – she will only play messenger if he agrees to be her partner in an approaching dance contest.
Furthermore, the usually-level headed Pat Snr, through some kind of fuzzy superstitious logic, thinks that his son is something of a football good luck charm when it comes to the Philadelphia Eagles’ winning streak and demands the boy go to the team’s Sunday home game against the Dallas Cowboys to show his support, a directive which clashes with junior’s plan to properly rehearse an extremely important dance move with the woman he is starting to fall for.
Just to complicate things, dad puts his and Dolores’ future (a mooted restaurant) on the line in a dangerously high risk bet with his friend Randy (Paul Herman). Under the terms of this wager, the Eagles must win while junior and Tiffany have to score at least five out of 10 in the looming competition.
So what happens? Well, despite being way out of their league, and regardless of the fact Pat loses self-control and feigns cunnilingus on his dance partner during their routine, they end up passing the half way mark by the skin of their teeth.
Meanwhile, Pat Snr and his wife avoid bankruptcy after the Eagles win and are thus able to pursue their dreams of becoming part of the local hospitality industry.
And, of course, Pat and Tiffany consummate their love after he realises a reconciliation with Nikki is out of the question.
Effectively everyone wins in a dramatic landscape wherein mentally damaged brains and impetuous foolhardiness are overcome by bond-strengthening domestic bliss. If anything Silver Linings Playbook epitomises the worst aspects of the feel good movie, even when it seems to be navigating some rougher terrain.
This is not to say the film doesn’t have any redeeming values, as the lead performances (particularly Lawrence, who won an Oscar for her efforts, and Cooper who was nominated for one) are pretty good.
And, it must be said, some of the scenes dominated by mental angst are well constructed by Russell, a filmmaker who, since directing the somewhat inconclusive mother-son incest saga Spanking the Monkey in 1994, has established a substantial Hollywood track record.
Unfortunately, Silver Linings Playbook’s moments of sometimes uncomfortable poignancy are more or less circumvented by a sense of optimism that ends up overplaying its hand.
If anything, it highlight’s the filmmaker’s penchant for being a crowd pleaser, despite the fact he sometimes deals with harsh subject matter which doesn’t necessarily warrant being as much fun as it eventually is.
Just about all of Russell’s movies – from 1999’s Iraq War romp Three Kings and the knuckle-headed scam-driven American Hustle (2013) ‒ suffer, to some degree, from this melodramatic affliction.
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