What Silver Lining? Are These People "Crazy" To Begin With?

Rating: 4/10 (7 September 2013)

I just watched this film and the one pressing question that I had was were these characters really mentally ill to begin with? They described behaviors that are undesirable yet ambiguous. In our family's culture, Pat Jr. (Bradley Cooper) and Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) are not "crazy". This would be normal considering the traumatic events of both parties.
Pat walked in on his wife having sex with the school principal and beat him bloody. Pat was mandated to stay eight months at a mental institution instead of being sent to jail. Pat comes from a comfortable enough family for them to pay an attorney to "facilitate" this as opposed to serving jail time. Pat Sr. (Robert DeNiro) is a restaurant owner. Given Pat Jr's. predicament it is easy to see why the poor old man's broke.
Pat Sr. appears to be OCD, but he's harmless. Yes, he does appear to have a gambling problem and the film made light of that which is troubling. Gambling addiction is just as bad as drugs just because there's no illicit substance in the middle. Robert DeNiro's performance is very humane; I felt empathy for Pat Sr.
Dolores (Jacki Weaver) breaks my heart because I can see the pain in her eyes when dealing with the two most important men in her life with "mental health issues". Her voice is ignored and the men do whatever they want. She's the one who should be listened to.
Tiffany's nightmare began when her police officer husband had just purchased her lingerie and was killed in a car accident on his way home. Tiffany's way or mourning was to sleep with every person that she could as a means to forget. While this may be objectionable to some, this alone does not make her "nuts". I have a social science background and this script and direction only portrays depressed people with some anxiety features (e.g. OCD) at best. Considering the circumstances, this could be temporary for some of them. Across other cultures, these people are relatively normal considering what's happened to them. So perhaps this is white American suburbia's take on what "mental illness" really is.
The film suggests that the mental health system seeks to stigmatize and institutionalize people who don't tow the line. Perhaps the reason why the cops came over to the Solitano residence regularly and did nothing was because they may have felt that Pat Jr. was just going through a "rough time" after his wife Nikki (Brea Bee) left him for the school principal. This, in my opinion, is a reflection on the sad reality on the way some law enforcement handle matters of domestic violence. To this end I will not criticize the film makers.
I do not like the way that Tiffany's character was treated. There were so many closeups of her breasts, hips and rear end. She's supposed to be seen as a grieving widow, even if she describes herself as a little loose. She was objectified through the lens of men as if she's asking for "it" for being so sexual and having a hot body. Even Pat objectified her from time to time. In their final dance scene Pat practically simulates oral sex on Tiffany in front of the audience with his soon to be ex-wife, ex-sister-in-law, friends and family. Is the director trying to say that mentally ill people are so not with it that they would do something "crazy" like recreate sex in public, that is exhibitionism? By the way exhibitionism is a paraphilia and not a mood disorder.
The annoying kid who always came to the Solitano residence with his video phone to "conduct" mock interviews and ridicule Pat Jr., Ricky D'Angelo (Matthew Russell), disturbed me. What a lack of manners. Even when I was that age I knew better than to bother others, especially people with "issues". This obviously shows that this kid has no culture whatsoever and who is responsible for that? That's alone to make anybody crazy.
I could not understand why Nikki showed up the Pat's dance competition if she had a restraining order against him. Isn't she supposed to be scared? Also, would her new man approve of this considered that he received a bad beat down? Then, she even had an intimate conversation with her ex afterwards. Nothing in her looked like a domestic violence victim. This portrayal totally undermines the women who may be going through this for real.
It was refreshing to see the director use racism as a parallel against the discrimination and that the mentally ill experience in the Asian Invasion scene. That was actually touching because Dr. Patel was one of the people assaulted, and he was a good source of support to Pat Jr.
Although I am not from Philly, I spent time in Massachusetts and New Jersey, and there are things that I could definitely relate to. One of them were the bushy deciduous trees, traditional styled homes, Pat dunking a biscotti into his coffee, the passion for hometown football, late night diners, narrow streets lined with parked cars and antique looking schools.
David O. Russell captured the nuances of these details perfectly. I just wish the rest of the film would have been more cohesive and compelling. I will say that the all of the actors are great in their own right, and each add their grain of sand to the whole plot.