dvd of the week
When I read that Silver Linings Playbook was about two psychologically troubled people, I was initially concerned. So many film depictions of crazy are just crazy awful. I wasn’t encouraged when the first few scenes of the film took place in a mental hospital. But shortly after Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) is discharged by his extremely concerned mother (Jacki Weaver) and I watched them and Pat’s obsessive-compulsive father (Robert De Niro) communicate, or fail to, as a family, I saw that director David O. Russell was going for authenticity, not parody, and those worries dissipated.
And when Pat is set up with a similarly distressed Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), and they start comparing their psychopharmaceutical experiences and debating who is more screwed up, the worries evaporated.
This is a movie about people and relationships, about love and self-forgiveness, about functioning within dysfunction; it is not a movie about illness. And it’s among the best films I saw last year. The entire cast was nominated for Oscars, and Lawrence won.
