Like the bipolar
protagonist at its centre, David O. Russell's Silver Linings
Playbook is prone to wild mood swings at the drop of a hat.
Fluctuating between wry humour, dramatic pathos, and earnest romance,
it may not bring you any closer to understanding mental illness, but
it makes for a surprisingly fun and satisfying picture.
In fact, the film
actually downplays the severity of mental illness insomuch as it
suggests that everybody is, to an extent, “crazy”. Pat Solitano
(Bradley Cooper) – an undiagnosed bipolar having just completed his
stay at a psychiatric hospital following a particularly violent
episode – may be the character whose mental issues are addressed
most directly, but we come to see how he's less strange when
surrounded by his unstable family and friends. Be it his OCD father
(Robert De Niro) who superstitiously insists on very specific
conditions in order to win money on NFL games, his marriage-smothered
best friend (John Ortiz), his mental ward cohort (Chris Tucker), or
even his well-meaning but stifling mother (Jackie Weaver), everyone
in his life exhibits some degree of “crazy”.
