Happy New Year film fanatics!
Gosh, it’s been a while – I know one
of my New Year’s resolutions will be to post on here much more often. Anyway, a
couple of weeks ago I ventured out to the cinema in the cold to see Silver Linings Playbook. It was actually
my friend’s choice to see this – I was kind of pining for Great Expectations – but I went along in the hope of seeing
something different, having never heard of the director, yet heard plenty about
its stars, Bradley Cooper (The Hangover)
and Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games).
So, this is what I thought…
The first thing I noted about this
film was the opening sequence (I know I talk about openings a lot, but if a
film doesn’t have a good opening sequence, it kinda puts a downer on the rest
of it). We are in a Mental Health Hospital in Philadelphia, and are introduced
to who we presume is a patient, but we don’t see his face – the camera is
behind him for a little while beforehand. This is Cooper’s character, Pat Solitano
– after 8 months in the hospital, he is finally heading home. We later learn
that he is an undiagnosed bipolar, and went to the hospital after discovering
his wife Nikki’s affair with a work colleague (he walked in on them in the
shower – awkward).
We then meet Tiffany Maxwell (Lawrence),
who is also mentally unstable due to becoming a widow, and dealt with her
husband’s death by sleeping with everyone in her office (and, unsurprisingly,
lost her job soon after). They meet at Pat’s friend Ronnie’s house for dinner
(Tiffany is Ronnie’s sister-in-law), and don’t exactly get off to a good start –
at one point, Pat describes her as a “married-to-a-dead-guy-slut”. They then
end up meeting each other on several occasions when both are out jogging – during
one of these meetings, Tiffany asks Pat if he’ll be her partner in a dance
competition that she’s desperate to enter. Pat at first refuses, but later
accepts on the condition that Tiffany will deliver a letter from him to his ex-wife,
who Pat has had no contact with due to Nikki filing a restraining order against
him. And so, rehearsals begin.
That’s enough of the plot for now I
think, as too many more details will ruin it a little for those still intending
to see this film. But some of the best parts? When Pat jogs to the school he
used to work at and sees a former colleague, his excitement at seeing her
contrasts with her terrified behaviour, and it’s funny to watch as he appears a
little over-enthusiastic. Aside from this humorous moment, one of the more
meaningful scenes is when Pat flips. The distorted camera jumps from one
character to another, Pat is screaming with rage, his parents, Pat Sr. and
Dolores (Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver) are trying to calm him, and Pat hits
Dolores. It was hard to watch, given that Pat had been doing well in feeling better up until this point, but then again it was a powerful scene to show
the audience the difficulties faced when coping with mental illness. And some bad
points? I felt that the film dragged on a little – it took a long time to
actually get to the dance competition, which is close to the end of the film –
so the pace could have been a bit quicker, but that was the only snag.
Overall, Silver Linings Playbook is different to your average rom-com. There
are serious and sensitive issues, there’s violence, and there’s drama. But, there’s also
humour, complicated relationships and a believable plot, all of which make this
film very fresh and very realistic. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen
before, and certainly beats your average soppy romantic comedy.
Rating: 4 stars – yep, if you get the chance then go and watch it!
(Plus, Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for Best Actress for this movie after I posted this review - another reason to watch this!)
Georgie
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