Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook directed by David O. Russell starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, and Chris Tucker.

I like how this movie takes the normal romantic comedy genre and gives it a little twist: namely having the two main characters have mental issues.  Then the story doesn’t hide these mental issues with a blanket of kindness but presents them in an honest, realistic way.   It weaves this theme of mental issues throughout the movie as every character is dealing with them in some way or another.  I think the only character not to have any mental issues is the main characters mom.  But then she is still dealing with mental issues because of her son and her OCD husband, even then the theme is seen flowing through her.  I don’t see a lot of screenplays like this now-a-days that take a theme and actually addresses that theme throughout the movie.  Normally what happens is that most movies seem devoted to special effects, pretentiousness, shock, preaching, or some other, everyday gimmick or fade.  It’s hard to find a movie this focused on something that’s not doing any of those things above but actually telling a story.  Another thing this movie does that seems lost on most films today: it has some actual characters.  Characters with a past, characters with history, characters with real problems, and characters are real.  These characters are the fuel that drives this story.  Despite all the problems these characters have, I found myself routing for them because they seemed so genuine and honest. 

A movie might have good characters and a good screenplay, and easily get by with these.  But when good actors are put into the movie to embody these characters and flesh them out, then something special happens.  Silver Linings Playbook is that movie.  Every one of the actors who play these characters breathes them to life, putting flesh, blood, and bones into characters that were only words on a page.  This is Bradley Cooper’s best performance hands down.  He has some scenes where he just nails it as he does a slight of hand with a wide range of emotions.  One scene in particular called for him to weave through this maze of emotions, mixing facial expressions and acting to convey the jumbled emotions flowing through his character.  Jennifer Lawrence walks into this movie at just the right time to inject her sexiness, playfulness, and craziness to match Cooper’s craziness.  The scene where they sit at the table talking about the medications their taking, or have took, seals the deal with their compatibility.  They’re made for each other.  Every character in this movie gets some good show casing scenes.  One of the best scenes in the movie is where every character shows up and Lawrence’s character presents her reasons for seeing Copper’s character.  She’s in the room with De Niro (who delivers one of his best performances in years) and everyone else and just delivers.   

David O Russell has some kind of resurgence as a director over the last few years with this movie and Fighter.  He’s the one man who all directors need to go to too learn about directing with hand held cameras.  Unlike most directors who use hand held cameras, which is pretty much every director, Russell actually sets up a shot with a hand held camera, without all the jerking, crazy motion that seems destined to be with hand held camera.  By using this hand held camera approach, he creates an intimacy with the story and the characters that make it feel like I was watching a documentary.  He did this same thing to perfect effect with the Fighter also.  Another thing Russell does is he either uses lots of locations or his production designer is just that good at, either way his last two movies have had a realistic feel and appearance to them, which only adds to the story and characters.  Doing this must only help the actors out as they don’t have to make believe a lot of things, because everything surrounding them is as real as real can be.