“Silver Linings Playbook” screenplay written and directed by David O. Russell

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Dan Walker on Film

Silver Linings Playbook

Director:

David O. Russell (Three Kings, I Heart Huckabees, The Fighter)

Cast:

Bradley Cooper (Wet Hot American Summer, The Hangovers, Limitless)

Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone, The Hunger Games)

Robert De Niro (Goodfellas, Best Supporting Oscar for The Godfather Part II, Best Actor Oscar for Raging Bull)

Jacki Weaver (new to me)

Running Time: 122 Minutes

While “Argo”, “Lincoln”, “Life of Pi” and “Les Miserables” were all great, “Silver Linings Playbook” is the film I enjoyed most this year and it’s fitting I saw it last.  The other movies are based on history or historic people, fiction/pseudo-fantasy or classical literature.  SLP is about regular people and their relationships which, when done well, are the movies I find most satisfying.

The story is set in Philadelphia.  Pat (Bradley Cooper) has been diagnosed and institutionalized with bipolar disorder after losing his job (as a substitute teacher,) his home and his (cheating) wife Nikki.  When we first meet him, he is getting out of the institution early but, as a condition, he has to move back in with his parents, Pat Sr. (De Niro) and Delores (Jacki Weaver).   After losing the weight his wife wanted him to lose while institutionalized, Pat focuses on getting back his job and wife – who has a restraining order against him.  Clearly, this guy has dug himself into a hole.

While trying to regain control of his life, Pat meets Tiffany, sister of his friend’s wife and someone with problems of her own.  A scene where the two compare medications over dinner explains both their situations and their mutual attraction in meeting a kindred spirit with similar  experiences to share.   Tiffany tells Pat she’ll forward a letter he writes to Nikki – illegal because of the restraining order – but only if Pat will do something for her.  That something starts a not-too-stable relationship between two, who begin to bump heads.

Given a complex role with solid, believable dialogue, Cooper takes his acting up several levels and does so extremely well.   Playing crazy is an actor’s jackpot. It is easily overdone (see Joaquin Phoenix in “The Master”).  Unlike Phoenix’s bizarre ex-GI, you understand what is triggering Cooper’s struggles. You pull for him to regain his life. You feel his pain when he’s knocked back two steps. Scene after scene has you wondering if Pat can really get better.  Cooper is present throughout and convinces through several twist and turns.

Lawrence got a deserving Best Actress nomination for the tough-to-watch “Winter’s Bone” while still in her teens and she’s good in this year’s “The Hunger Games”.   Playing someone with behavioral problems lets an actor open up and add nuance to a character. Like Cooper, you understand why she is doing what she does.  She brings a lot to her role and fleshes out her quirky character beautifully and believably.   There’s a thoughtful, feeling human being under the dysfunctional exterior.  The two actors play off each other well. There is real chemistry here.  Each seems to really help the other bring out their character. Both easily deserve their Oscar nominations for this movie.

Getting his own first nomination since 1991’s “Cape Fear”, Robert De Niro, as Pat’s father, has his own set of idiosyncrasies.  He clearly has OCD, shown in his ritualistic devotion to the Philadelphia Eagles and a very serious gambling problem.   He gets a lot of screen time and is solid in a role that isn’t necessarily showy or colorful.   Usually, when there’s a movie where the lead has a behavioral problem, they are the only one.  Here there are three people with behavioral problems, which adds that much to the movie’s situations, especially the confrontations between any of the three.

Australian actress Jacki Weaver as Pat’s mother, plays a wonderful, warm supportive-despite-the-circumstances wife and mother. She is good in her role, thoroughly American,  and pairs well with De Niro but I was surprised by her Best Supporting Oscar nomination.  She isn’t in the movie that much and her character tends to repeat herself and lacks a stop-the-movie moment of her own.  Chris Tucker, in his first non-“Rush Hour” role since 1997’s “Jackie Brown”, is also good in a role that doesn’t really add much to the story. He lets let us know Pat made a friend while he was institutionalized, if a slightly off-the-wall one.  Oh, and he teaches Pat and Tiffany how to loosen up when they decide to get in to a dance competition that will move the plot along.

Just like he did with the dysfunctional, intense characters/relationships in “The Fighter”, director Russell takes irritating characters and makes them so interesting that you really about how their progress.  As in “The Fighter”, the supporting characters are well-fleshed out and well-acted.  As each character appears, you try to figure out who is and isn’t good for Pat and Tiffany.   You just keep bracing for more bad things to happen because that seems to be the pattern of Pat and Tiffany’s lives.  Both seem constantly on the verge of snapping, so the film holds you attention for over two hours.

The movie is only “romantic” and a “comedy” technically. There are certainly funny moments and romance is at the center of the story-lines,  but the interactions, situations and behaviors are also quite serious (without being life-threatening.) The movie balances all its various elements in an extremely entertaining way.

Leaving the theater is like leaving a chaotic evening spent with some special, if challenged friends. You laugh, but you feel for them.

As I watched the movie, and with the Oscars in mind, I thought about Cooper’s crazy role here vs. Joaquin Phoenix’s crazy role in “The Master”.  No contest.  Cooper has much more screen time, his craziness is credible, and the character and performance are far more nuanced and human.  And he’s in a much more palatable, thoughtful and interesting movie.  I gained back from this movie what I felt I lost watching “The Master”.

Cooper as Camper

Whenever I see Bradley Cooper in a movie, I can’t help but remember his film debut as a character suddenly stealing a make-out session with a male camp counselor in 2001’s “Wet Hot American Summer”, a sort of a Jewish “Caddyshack/Meatballs.”  Cooper has come a long way since then and, like Jackman in “Les Miserables”, this is the breakthrough role of his career and should be a springboard to more big, thoughtful, complicated parts.

I also thought of De Niro’s performance vs. Alan Arkin’s in “Argo”. De Niro actually got to play a fully fleshed-out character vs. seeing one side of Arkin’s character.  De Niro gets a lot of screen time. Arkin is gone for long stretches.    Yet Arkin, as I mentioned in my write-up for “Argo”, was very charismatic in his few scenes.  You are waiting for him to turn up again. I hate saying this because I like him so much but De Niro’s performances over the last twenty years, while all solid, seem to lack the presence he had in the 70’s and 80’s. We are way far away from the Deer Hunter and Taxi Driver and young Vito Corleone. He has become a comfortable comedic actor, with no edge, no fiber and no steel. That said his bumbling ex-con character in “Jackie Brown” is one of my favorite De Niro performances ever.

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