Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Directed by David O. Russell
After losing his job and wife, and spending time in an institution, a former teacher winds up living with his parents. He wants to rebuild his life and reconcile with his wife, but his father would be happy if he shared his obsession with the Philadelphia Eagles. Things get complicated when he meets Tiffany Maxwell who offers to help him reconnect with his wife if he will do something very important for her in exchange.
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We get a glimmer of the error of the newfound optimism of the protagonist of Silver Linings Playbook when he throws a hardcover copy of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms through the closed window of his bedroom in his parents' attic.
This leads, however, to Pat flinging a copy of “A Farewell to Arms” through a closed window at 4 o’clock in the morning, and awakening his parents with a maniacal rant against Ernest Hemingway.
In one hilarious scene early on in the film, an enraged Pat bursts in to his parents’ bedroom and rails against Ernest Hemingway’s heartbreaking ending in “A Farewell To Arms”.
More than any other Hollywood filmmaker, Russell has demonstrated a facility with nutty situations, screwball energy, and eccentric characters, the kind of facility that recalls Sturges in his Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek heyday, the kind that approximates the manic farce of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot together with the acerbic wit and sentiment of The Apartment.
Tiffany may not really be a lot more than a variation on, most obviously, Carole Lombard’s dizzy rich girl in My Man Godfrey (1936), but the character has more depth — and more pain — than you see in that earlier form.
Sometimes when the anger erupts to the surface, “Silver Linings Playbook” is reminiscent of psychodramas such as Mike Nichols’ adaptation of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” but mostly it’s modeled on the gentler eccentricities of Nichols’ “The Graduate” and kindred ’60s and ’70s flicks such as “Harold and Maude.”
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From Spanking the Monkey to The Fighter, Russell observes the troubled soul within the environment that causes most of the damage — the family — which he details down to the dinner table spats and the ugly wallpaper in the living room.
Based on a novel by Matthew Quick and adapted for the screen by Russell himself, Silver Linings Playbook is an unfussy, rambling crowd-pleaser that recalls elements of the filmmaker's past work: the New Age coachings of the existential detectives in I Heart Huckabees, the back-in-your-childhood-home set-up of Spanking the Monkey and the chaotic regional family flavor of The Fighter.
As he did in early works such as Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, the director profitably mines deep veins of insecurity and compulsion.
With a résumé including "Spanking the Monkey," "Flirting With Disaster," "The Fighter" and now "Silver Linings Playbook," director David O. Russell is becoming to freaky family dysfunction what Scorsese is to the Mafia.
Following a detour into heavy drama with The Fighter, David O. Russell returns to his distinctive brand of neurotic screwball comedy, and like his early features Spanking the Monkey (1994) and Flirting With Disaster (1996), this one somersaults giddily from sanity to insanity to sanity again.
In such early films as "Spanking the Monkey" and "Flirting with Disaster," director David O. Russell depicted dysfunctional relationships with a keen eye for their darkly comedic potential.
More than any other Hollywood filmmaker, Russell has demonstrated a facility with nutty situations, screwball energy, and eccentric characters, the kind of facility that recalls Sturges in his Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek heyday, the kind that approximates the manic farce of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot together with the acerbic wit and sentiment of The Apartment.
With bold camera moves and jumps between scenes, there’s an antic quality to “Silver Linings Playbook” that reaches all the way back to such 1930s screwball comedies as “Bringing Up Baby.”
Answer: If a perplexed paleontologist can fall for a madcap heiress in "Bringing Up Baby," and a cynical newspaperman can succumb to the charms of a fraudulent victim of radium poisoning in "Nothing Sacred," why not?
More than any other Hollywood filmmaker, Russell has demonstrated a facility with nutty situations, screwball energy, and eccentric characters, the kind of facility that recalls Sturges in his Hail the Conquering Hero and Miracle of Morgan’s Creek heyday, the kind that approximates the manic farce of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot together with the acerbic wit and sentiment of The Apartment.
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It takes an adventurous director such as Russell (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings and The Fighter) to keep a movie such as Silver Linings Playbook from blowing up in its own face.
Following a detour into heavy drama with The Fighter, David O. Russell returns to his distinctive brand of neurotic screwball comedy, and like his early features Spanking the Monkey (1994) and Flirting With Disaster (1996), this one somersaults giddily from sanity to insanity to sanity again.
As he did in early works such as Spanking the Monkey and Flirting With Disaster, the director profitably mines deep veins of insecurity and compulsion.
Though not as daffily inventive as director David O. Russell's best comedy, Flirting with Disaster (1996),Silver Linings is consistently entertaining, with its scrappy, well-drawn characters, offbeat humor and indefatigable positive outlook.
In such early films as "Spanking the Monkey" and "Flirting with Disaster," director David O. Russell depicted dysfunctional relationships with a keen eye for their darkly comedic potential.
Russell has worked in this terrain before, particularly in his early films like Flirting With Disaster (1997) and his excellent, vastly underrated Iraq war caper Three Kings (1999), and at times he and his excellent ensemble cast nail the essential thrills and terrors of a life unstable, creating a sense of unfettered humanity that is both compelling and oddly humorous.
Where would we be – we readers, playgoers, screen spectators – without the screaming matches, weeping fits and confessional unravellings of US drama, from Long Day’s Journey Into Night to East of Eden to Dallas?