A book with plenty of tricks up its sleeve

Rating: 9/10 (5 January 2013)

Silver Linings Playbook, by David O. Russell, is one of those movies with a protagonist whom you fervently wish can overcome his demons but whose methods and goals you cannot easily reconcile. The movie is witty, foul-mouthed, very poignant, elegant, and, of course, odd.
Pat (Bradley Cooper, playing way against type) has just been released from an eight-month mental-health-facility. His doctors are reluctant, but his mother (Jacki Weaver) insists he's better and that the place is, well, no place for him. She brings Pat back home to live with her and Pat's father Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro), hoping that after eight months Pat will be able to get his life back in order once again.
Pat, though, has other plans. He had been committed to the hospital because he violently beat a fellow teacher whom he had caught in the shower with his wife. Okay, so he snapped - he was lucky that hospital care was all he got. In any event, what he wants to do now is reconcile with his wife and resume his life. Sure, there's a restraining order, which is why he goes to the trouble of reading the books she teaches in her English class, anything to prove he's more mentally fit. Oh, during his stay he loses a lot of weight (apparently), something his then-wife had harped on. (Note: She sounds like a winner to me.)
Things do not go as planned. For one thing, Pat never takes his medication (he's bipolar), which leads to the occasional angry outburst; the song that had been played at his wedding and was played while his wife took her infamous shower is now a trigger for more violent behavior, even when he doesn't hear it. He wants badly to make amends, but he's aiming in the wrong direction, as his ex shows no signs of wishing to see him again.
To help him along, friends Ronnie and Veronica ask Pat over to dinner, and they invite Veronica's iconoclastic sister Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who has social skills that are below even Pat's. The dinner isn't exactly a disaster, but Tiffany leaves abruptly and has Pat walk her home. A kindred friendship is born.
Although the reason for Tiffany's behavior is somewhat important to the plot, I won't mention it here, but somehow she sees something in Pat, something honest, someone she can relate to. Meanwhile, Pat Sr., a huge Philadelphia Eagles fan, considers his son to be a lucky charm and practically begs Pat to stay and watch the game with him on Sundays. Pat Sr. desperately wishes to reconnect with his son (there's a recurring theme), but Pat is ambivalent. To cope with his own emotions, he jogs. A lot.
The emotional tug of war, punctuated by the Pat's own inability to control himself (still no meds for him) begins to ebb a little when Tiffany makes him a deal: she'll do something for him (not spoiling) and in exchange he will be her dance partner. You see, Tiffany studies dance as a way to cope with her demons, and there's a gala competition coming up - but one cannot compete without a partner, and she has nobody. Even her parents are wary of her. So that's the deal.
So on the one hand you have Pat Sr. believing his son is a lucky charm and wanting to spend more time with him anyway, and on the other hand you have Tiffany, who offers to help Pat achieve his overall goal if he'll help her. There's a lot of bickering back and forth among everyone; that is, when there's no jogging involved (note: there's plenty).
Okay, enough about the plot; I'll stop before I do give something away. Let's look at the performances. Cooper is exceptional. We've seen him be kind of a jerk in The Hangover and a ladies' man in The A Team, and here he is as a completely conflicted man who desperately wishes to reach a goal for which he's striven for eight months. His is a raw, laid-bare performance.
Lawrence is truly stunning as the somewhat-unstable Tiffany. She's passionate, angry, caring, bitter, sweet, and she possesses even more charisma than she did in The Hunger Games or Winter's Bone. Her jaw- dropping work here is very much deserving of award recognition; Tiffany can be brutal and brittle and still completely endearing. It's the best work Lawrence has done in her short but strong career.
Surprisingly to me, though, the standout in this cast is DeNiro. Now, DeNiro has been sort of phoning it in for a few years now, with the exception (perhaps) of movies like Limitless and Stardust. But here he really shines; it's possibly his best work since at least the 1990s. I've seen tough guys on camera get emotional, and often it just doesn't work. They can't sell it. There's a rare breed of actor who can do the macho angle and the sensitive angle and do it justice, and DeNiro, particularly here, pulls it off. Pat Sr., himself an emotional fellow, is a man full of love and passion and a man who is not without some regrets on how he's raised his kids. DeNiro brings all of that out flawlessly.
Silver Linings Playbook is not a lighthearted movie. It's compelling drama led by a cast composed of relative neophytes and grizzled veterans. It's quirky, just like its director, and it is a clear-cut winner. Here's the best thing I can say about the movie: It feels authentic. When someone is hurt, I feel bad for them; I don't feel that they're staging it. The script is original and idiosyncratic, and every morsel of every scene is one to cherish.