David O. Russell doesn’t make the mundane sort of movies that blend in with everything else that gets released. No matter his subject, Russell is the kind of filmmaker who makes work that takes risks; that takes elements that may not seem to go together at first glance and puts them together anyway. Sometimes that can result in movies that look more like messy experiments than they do refined work, but sometimes the risks all work out, and the results are the sort of original, affecting movies that stick with you long after you’ve seen them. His most recent film, The Fighter, tried to take an inspirational sports movie and a gritty drug drama and mash them together. The results were mixed, but so compelling that people ended up liking them a whole lot anyway. His new film, The Silver Linings Playbook, is even more confusing to explain. It’s a comeback story, a family drama, a look at compulsion and mental illness, a movie about dancing, and a nail-biter about gambling, all at the same time—and somehow all of these elements work perfectly in concert with one another, creating the sort of special filmgoing experience that you don’t get to have all that often.
The story here, put as simply as possible, is that of a schoolteacher named Pat (Bradley Cooper) who found his wife acting salaciously in the shower with another man, reacted to the situation violently, and learned that he had been suffering from serious, undiagnosed mental illnesses in the aftermath of his violent outburst. After spending a good chunk of time in the care of a mental institution he’s now out, adhering to a new code that emphasizes maintaining a positive mental outlook, living with his parents, and looking to win back his wife. The only problems with this are... it doesn’t really seem like Pat is actually that much better, his wife now has a restraining order against him, and she and pretty much the entire community no longer want anything to do with him. Can he work through his bipolar ticks, survive life back at home with his parents, and make everything that’s gone wrong right again? Probably not, especially if the unwanted attentions of a similarly disturbed acquaintance (Jennifer Lawrence) don’t stop distracting him.
Cooper has become a big star over the past few years, but he’s never gotten much praise for his actual acting. He’s the smug prick in Wedding Crashers, the charmingly smug prick in The Hangover, or even the guy who’s handsome enough to become a full-fledged movie star and anchor his own film in Limitless; but nobody’s ever praised him as being as actor’s actor. That could all change after people see what he accomplishes here though. Cooper is doing similar work here than he did in Limitless, only instead of playing a character whose life is reshaped by magic pills, he’s playing one whose life has been reshaped by an intense focus of his mental illnesses. He’s like Batman if Bruce Wayne were preoccupied with positivity instead of vengeance, and that little twist on things is enough to give Cooper the biggest platform to show off his acting chops that he’s gotten to date. He’s great here, radiating a nervous energy every second he’s on the screen and playing tightly wound so perfectly that he becomes something of a raw nerve—one that makes you wince every time it seems like someone might accidentally brush up against it. There’s a real tension in the inevitability of his outbursts, and a real menace that lurks under the surface of all of his positivity; but Cooper is also likable and vulnerable enough that he keeps you rooting for his character even when you’re slightly in fear of him. Is this an awards worthy performance? Maybe, maybe not. Who really cares about all of that nonsense? But is it a performance that’s going to turn some heads and take his career in a new direction? Without a doubt.
Cooper isn’t the only one who gets a meaty character to sink his teeth into either. Robert De Niro shows up playing Pat’s gambling-obsessed father, and he’s just great. All of the intricate rituals and superstitions De Niro’s character engages in every Sunday when the Philadelphia Eagles play are played for laughs, but they’re funny because De Niro presents the character with a straight face. The humor works because Pat’s dad doesn’t understand how silly his rituals are, or how irresponsible his gambling of his family’s nest egg is. He truly believes in fate, destiny, and that everyone is going to get what they deserve in the end, and De Niro plays the role with 100% emotional commitment, proving that he actually can be funny. The difference between this and the miserable stuff he does in those Fockers movie is that there’s no winking at the camera. Completely crazy characters are best when played as low-key as possible. When you take material that’s already broad and them ham it up even further, the results are atrociously bad comedy. And if De Niro was doing that sort of stuff here, it would have been especially bad, as he would have been completely out of place handling the handful of dramatic moments his character gets toward the end of the film; moments that he also completely nails. It’s kind of a shame that Jackie Weaver, who’s playing the mother, didn’t get as much to do as De Niro. As she proved in Animal Kingdom, Weaver is a profoundly compelling actress, and the fact that all she gets to do here is get a few laughs as a caricature of a doting mother feels like something of a waste. Still though, one of the things that separates a good movie from a great one is casting great actors in even the small roles.
The other big success story Silver Linings gives us is Jennifer Lawrence’s performance. She plays a wounded woman who’s been acting out and experiencing instability ever since her police officer husband was killed, and she’s just so damned great in the role that it has to be seen to be believed. She enters this film in kind of the opposite position that Cooper did. She got everyone’s attention with her acting skill due to her breakout performance in Winter’s Bone, and then went on to do the movie star stuff with roles in things like X-Men: First Class and The Hunger Games. Well, star-status achieved, I guess we can consider Silver Linings as being her return to more serious, dramatic work; and she brings with her every bit of the overpowering charisma, beyond her years authority, and deep reserves of pain that she showed off in Winter’s Bone. This girl is already good, really good, and she’s still in the very early stages of her career. There’s no telling what heights she will eventually achieve.
Impressive as they were, Cooper, De Niro, and Lawrence wouldn’t have been able to achieve half of what they did if they weren’t given such great material to work with, so quite a bit of credit needs to also be given to Silver Lining’s script, which is a Russell-penned adaptation of a novel by Matthew Quick. Not only is everyone given strong personalities and delightfully unique dialogue to deliver, but the characters here are also all complex, three-dimensional, and completely engaged in their own personal struggles—yet somehow Russell’s script is able to fit them all together like puzzle pieces, making all of their individual journeys come together perfectly in the film’s epic conclusion; which concurrently involves a high-stakes ballroom dancing competition, a dramatic reunion between two long-estranged loved ones, as well as a climactic game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys. The results are epic, one-of-a-kind, and almost transcendently joy inducing.
More than anything else though, I think I responded so strongly to The Silver Linings Playbook because it’s, at its heart, a romantic comedy—a truly great one—and it’s not often that you get to see a film in this generally cookie-cutter and disposable genre that’s actually impressive. Which is a shame, because rom-coms are exactly the kind of thing that shouldn’t be all that hard to do. The clichés all exist for a reason—because they’re effective—and as long as you put enough of your own spin on them, the only thing you need to do to make a good rom-com is to create likable characters, make the stakes of how important it is these characters find happiness clear, delay gratification for as long as possible, and then pay off all the tension you’ve built in a big, cathartic climax. Unfortunately, too many rom-coms present us with vapid, vile characters, joylessly churn through all of the clichés without any perceivable affection for the story being told, fail to build any sort of will they/won’t they tension that isn’t completely surface level, and generally just represent another paycheck for Kate Hudson, Katherine Heigl, Jennifer Lopez, and whatever generically lantern-jawed hairdo they happen to be acting opposite of.
The Silver Linings Playbook presents you with challenging characters who become so well-developed that you can’t help but love them, it uses every tried-and-true trick in the book to milk every possible bit of tension out of their fates, and then it pays everything off in a climax that’s honestly cliché-ridden and broadly comedic, but that works exactly in the way that this stuff is supposed to, because it’s been laid on a properly built foundation. There may be no other type of film that’s better at pleasing a crowd than a well put together romantic comedy, and, with The Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell has presented everyone with a textbook example of how to make one. Hopefully other filmmakers are paying attention.
