I watched Silver Linings Playbook the other night and
thought it was fantastic. Dealing with
'mental illness' is always a difficult feat in fiction, either confusing quirks
for serious problems* or, alternately, proofing themselves against criticism of
treating the subject too lightly by only looking at descents so far into the
unrecognizable and extreme that it is easier to see the movies as psychological
horror instead of straight drama.
The movie is well paced and technically strong but it’s the
characters that make the movie stand out.
Immediately after the movie I wondered aloud why a movie ostensibly
about mental illness had the most realistic and well drawn characters I've seen
on film all year. I had a therapist’s son
once tell me** that lacking any neuroses is so unusual that it is, in itself,
treated as a disorder. Maybe it’s my
mood right now, but characters riddled with issues one redeeming quality ring
truer and more hopeful than the typical Hollywood character that is mostly
perfect but with a ‘character flaw’ that defines them somehow.
What the director, Russell, does so well is present us
people that live in this world- where everyone is crazy to some degree without requiring
it to be some crisis or disaster. Or
more precisely- it’s all crisis and disaster, but the sort that not only touches
upon daily life but often compels them.
His movie shifts effortlessly from romance to comedy to
tragedy to farce and back to family drama- and it feels like it SHOULD be effortless
as you watch it because it captures life, and sometimes that seems what life is-
comedy one second and tragedy the next.
Many people have decried the rise of prescription
psychiatry, and if you want to count me in the group that thinks we overuse it
at times, you can, (there’s a much longer debate here I won’t get into) but the
movie made me think about another aspect of it: I don’t know if it’s that sometimes it takes crazy to help crazy, or
maybe it’s helping someone that you think is crazier than you… of course not
every crazy family has a happy ending, with or without medicine, but sometimes the
other crazies are who we have so that we know we’re not alone in all this.
*I forgot what this footnote was supposed to be
**He was often full of shit, in a good way, so I’m not sure
whether this is true, but it feels
true
