Begin with a diagnosis?

Rating: 9/10 (4 January 2019)

I'm surprised that I really like this film. I'm not a movie buff and had just watched a series of films through the Christmas/New Year season as a break from the festivities.
For the first 30 minutes or so I debated whether I would stop watching Silver Linings Playbook. Mental illness is like poverty and sadism: portraying such situations can only replicate the reality of those afflictions. Only when Pat and Tiffany meet did I begin to grasp the actual dynamic driving this quite remarkable film. It's not about mental illness or screwed-up lives - it's about people, just people. True, Pat can run out of control, but look at his father: his generation got banned for violence, while Pat in his generation gets committed - a matter of social conventions, not medicine. Tiffany? Tiffany is real (something Jennifer Lawrence obviously grasped about her character). Her husband is killed in a stupid accident while trying to help her: no wonder she goes bouncing of everyone she meets. How else can she handle the utter stupidity of her husband's fate? The great thing in this film is watching her bounce off Pat, who in turn is so preoccupied with getting back with his wife that he hardly notices what she is doing. The upshot is that this allows her to regain some control of her reality. Then Tiffany, being the kind of woman she is, sets about pulling Pat into that reality: let's dance.
As for the ending: it's a moment of rest, of balance, no more. A sequel to Silver Linings Playbook would be very interesting to watch. No doubt we would see how Pat, given a reasonably solid foundation in his relationship with Tiffany, could develop in a perhaps unforeseen way, no doubt still obsessive. Would Tiffany act to sustain the balance between them? Or would she just fall away, now that she has achieved her long-held ambition to dance in public? Whatever else, they would never become a conventional married couple, like Pat's best friend and Tiffany's sister.
I had never seen or heard of Jennifer Lawrence before watching Silver Linings Playbook, but I am still stunned by the tangibility of the character she created. Probably a naive response on my part, but also a very pleasant one.