Sad endings might provoke more
emotions and make it harder for people to fall asleep afterwards, happy endings
always wins the hearts. I remember a really good friends of mine used to always
say to me when we were together prepared for a big project (more precisely he
was helping me preparing for that project) that fear and hope are the two most
powerful emotions. To deliver fear you need to go deep down and stimulate the
deepest fright is not an easy task, comparing to giving hope. This is certainly
not the first time we have gasped with admiration at a movie like this, and
certainly not the last. They almost all follow this similar routine – greet you
with darkness, main character has some sort of mental disorder or disturbing
past, after irritating everybody around himself/herself the cure comes, either
an event or a person or both, romantic love is normally indispensable, and a
grand happy ending.
Retrieved from IMDb
David O Russell tells us that his
true intention of this movie is to show people that ones with bipolar disease
or other mental illness might not be the crazy nuts as we often see them, but
just a bigger and more sensitive version of ourselves. And this movie serves to
help people understand them and remove prejudice put upon them by showing the
life that they experience. I don’t know if it precisely portrayed the people
with the metal illness, but based on my friend who has personal experience with
bipolar disorder, the movie is spot-on with the description. This fact further
shocks me because the last time that I clearly realize the fact that Pat is
mentally ill is at one intense scene where he and his father was punching each
other on the bed. This scene is happens at about thirty minutes into the film
and that’s only a quarter of it. From that point I was watching a normal life,
the disorder was only an underlying fact that did really come to my mind when I
perceive Pat’s behaviors. Unlike some movie’s that accentuate the lunatic side
and gets so posy and unreal that you want to smash the screen, David O Russell
definitely did a fantastic job at making things so natural and genuine that it
blends into everyday life.
Retrieved from IMDb
Enough about my personal
experience. Let’s talk something about the choreography. The key point of
making such a movie that has a classic structure that already a fait accompli,
is to be precise. The importance of the sense of time is just like cooking
where neither undercooked nor overcooked would work. There are a two elements
in the movie that demonstrate the precision. First when portraying mental
illness, a lot of the movies don’t know how to control the emotional outbursts
of the character and the time periods of these outbursts are dragged too long
and gets overdone. Silver Linings Playbook controlled all of the characters
mood swings under a minute so that it doesn’t get too intense or steal the
thunder of the theme of the film. The other one is the romance between Pat and
Tiffany. We could actually see the emotions and attraction develop gradually
and end in a sweet kiss instead of steamy sex. The moderation of this movie is
what makes it brilliant. The balance between the ferocious emotional outbursts
and the sane restrain together with the sharp rhetoric of each and every
character.
Retrieved from IMDb
I have to bring up Blue Jasmine
once more, watching that awful movie before this one provided a clear contrast.
Silver Linings Playbook has a clear storyline for every character and almost
every tie between the characters had a home to return to. The interaction
between brothers, father and son, mother and son, chums, lovers, races were all
exploited with meticulous effort and even smallest details were taken into
account, like an iPod.
One more thing to mention is
Bradley Cooper’s performance – I could see that he explored his vulnerability
in this film and the precision of the performance is just incredible. He made
my emotions swing with his, made me laugh and experience heartbreak. Yea that’s
what a comedy drama is about.
Check out the official trailer of the film!!
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