A breakthrough performance for Bradley Cooper

Rating: 8/10 (8 March 2014)

Dramatizing mental illness has always been a tricky proposition for the movies. How often have we seen such attempts devolve into either freak show comedy or horror movie madness? "Silver Linings Playbook" is one of the few to get it right. It's not that writer/director David O. Russell doesn't see the humor in the situations he's depicting - there are some very funny scenes in the movie - it's that he sees humor as just one small aspect of what turns out to be a far more complex and multi- layered condition.
In a tour-de-force performance that finally put him on the map as an actor of extraordinary talent, Bradley Cooper plays Pat, a young man who suffers from a severe case of Bi-Polar Disorder, so severe that Pat has been spending the past few months since the dissolution of his marriage in an institution. But Pat has chosen to move back in with his parents, who work hard at trying to understand Pat's condition and to cope with his often bizarre and incomprehensible behavior. While he nurtures the fantasy that he will one day reunite with his estranged wife, Pat meets Tiffany, a local girl who seems to have as many issues as he does when it comes to functioning in the real world.
"Silver Linings Playbook" makes the not entirely novel case that all of us suffer from our share of personal quirks and idiosyncrasies - Pat's dad's superstitious obsession with the Philadelphia Eagles isn't too many steps away from the irrational concerns that dictate Pat's life - but that BPD just ratchets them up to a much higher level. The screenplay, which was adapted from the Matthew Quick novel, goes from the comical to the serious to the heartbreaking to the romantic without any noticeable grinding of tonal gears. Ditto for the nearly perfect ensemble cast which includes Robert De Niro as Pat's father, Jacki Weaver as his mom, and Jennifer Lawrence as Tiffany, who won a Best Actress Oscar for her work.
But it is Cooper who makes the movie his own. There is scarcely a moment when he does not appear on screen and the actor casts a spell over the audience from first frame to last. He avoids the role-given temptation to chew the scenery, opting instead for understatement in his portrayal of a man whose desire to fit into the world is often at odds with his ability to do so. The result is a performance that elicits both laughter and tears from the audience, but which never feels contrived or manipulative while doing so. He draws us so deeply into the core of the character that we even accept his potentially trite belief that one must look for the silver lining in even the darkest of clouds since, when you think about it, what alternative does one really have? It's a career- defining performance for an actor clearly concerned with making the most of his time in the spotlight.