Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

Silver Linings Playbook is not a movie suited to popularity. Let me explain. The dark romantic comedy was released nationwide on Thanksgiving Day 2012. My local theater was in the middle of a buyout at that time and somehow managed to not get around to showing it until two months later. By the time I saw it in January 2013, it was already one of the biggest critical darlings of the year. Star Jennifer Lawrence won a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award and the film got a whopping eight Oscar nominations. These accolades are probably the reason anybody who hasn’t already seen it for its own merits will now watch it. All this hype and expectation creates a response in the average viewer I’ve already witnessed: “What’s the big deal?”

David O. Russell is a director whose films are about people above all else. Silver Linings Playbook is no exception, with a story so slight that describing it at all would invite spoilers. So, instead of explaining what you will see in the movie, I will explain why you should see it. Everything you’ve heard about it is true. All of its enormous amounts of praise are deserved. It is truly one of the highlights of the year. It is one of those movies where everything just clicks so perfectly. The screenplay by Russell, from the book by Matthew Quick, is extremely charming and not in the least bit trite as I expected. Most of the success’ credit goes to Russell who creates a perfectly subtle movie out of a story that could have been overplayed and goofy. This innocence and subtlety is the very thing that confuses the audience. It doesn’t wear its greatness on its sleeve.

Then there’s the performances. We all know that Robert DeNiro and Jacki Weaver are pretty much amazing no matter what they do. The leads are what carry the movie, acting with the same subtle control as the direction. I still remember the first time I saw Jennifer Lawrence, which was in her great performance in Winter’s Bone a couple years ago. It seems like every role she’s gotten since then hasn’t quite been suited for her, marring her former greatness, which she achieves again here. Lawrence seems to flow in and out of the picture, never really taking the spotlight. Her comic timing is abnormal, with laughs lurking in corners of her performance. If you catch them, they’re the biggest laughs of the film. Bradley Cooper has never been an actor I paid much attention to, probably due to that demeanor of nonchalance that allows him to play average guys with such ease. Here, he plays a mentally ill individual in a comedy, yet is never self-aware or mocking. In fact, he plays the character with such a dramatic intensity, despite the fact that much of what he does is actually funny, that he reaches that peak so many actors fail to achieve: I forgot he was acting.

What more could you possibly want from a movie? Silver Linings Playbook is the very example of how a genre movie should be made, with all the love and affection big-budget movies never seem to get and the attention to quality and substance that is too often overlooked. It is a near-perfect experience and I feel nothing but sorry for the ones who don’t see what a big deal it is. I suppose I am glad that it’s getting all this attention, but it’s a movie that I think would make the biggest impact as a pleasant surprise. So, watch it separate from the hype and let it surprise you.

10/10