Silver Linings Playbook

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2018)

Silver(Gold) Linings Playbook
Silver Lining Playbook should be called Gold Linings Playbook with the performance that David O. Russell puts up in this movie. Silver Lining Playbook opens up with Pat Solitano(Bradley Cooper) after 8 months in a mental hospital, realizing he's been separated from his wife after finding out he's an undiagnosed bipolar and realizes he needs to get his wife back, always keeping with him the idea that if you stay positive and work hard then a silver lining will happen; it just takes him the whole movie to figure out what that silver lining will be. Pat meets Tiffany(Jennifer Lawrence) who has just lost her husband and in her mourning also develops a mental illness, which creates a friendship that turns out to help both of them a lot more and in a way they never would've thought before.
David O. Russell takes the problem of mental health/illness and shows what it's like to be in their heads, for the people around them, and put into this real issue into a romantic comedy; putting mental health into a movie like a romantic comedy is genius because it shows how normal or regular it is for people to have them.
Silver Linings Playbook opens in the mental hospital where Pat is staying and his moms strong drive to take him out which builds a strong sense of pathos between the audience and Pat, and makes them feel sadness and pity for him. In building this Pathos it allows the audience to feel what he's feeling and relate to him more, and always hope for the best for him.
Russell chooses 2 incredible actors, Cooper and Lawrence, who are able to take the complexity of these characters to the next level and let us really see what is going on in the heads of these two characters, not just portraying them as crazy and through the eyes of just the surrounding people, but what mental processing is going through their heads when it's happening and what drives them to get there. A big trigger for Pat is hearing his wedding song, because that's the song that he was hearing when he walked in on his wife cheating on him with another worker at the school they worked at. Everytime Pat hears this song it triggers him to go back to that place he was in when he caught his wife with that man, and allows us to see how just one song can affect someone in this state of mind.
Though there aren't a ton of movies that put an emphasis on mental health, Silver Linings Playbook does fail to show how people who haven't suffered traumatic events like getting cheated on by your wife, or losing your husband can also suffer from mental health issues like depression, and anxiety. The Perks Of Being A Wallflower includes the aspect that anyone can suffer from mental illness and it doesn't make it any less important that they didn't go through anything traumatic and still happens just as much if not more. This is what Silver Linings Playbook lacks because although it puts a very big importance on this issue and in a realistic approach it lacks to show how common it is like The Perks Of Being A Wallflower does.
There has been so many movies done in the last couple of decades that Silver Lining Playbook gives us a breath of fresh air giving us a movie like nothing else made. Russell let's the audience draw their own conclusions about what they think of each character and whether or not Pat and Tiffany are actually crazy or it's actually that other people got them to that place. This movie makes the audience question society and how we treat people and to look at ourselves in the mirror and see the impact we have on one another, rather then bringing people down we need to focus on lifting them up . Silver Lining Playbook is a must see and you will not be disappointed in the performance by these two brilliant actors that make you fall in love and acquire more empathy and understanding for those who deal with mental illness everyday