excelsior
by Douglas Messerli
David O. Russell (screenplay, based
on a novel by Matthew Quick, and director) Silver
Linings Playbook / 2012
Let me begin by saying that I found David O. Russell’s new film, Silver Linings Playbook as oddly charming as its title, with its references to good times ahead while at the same moment suggesting events that are carefully plotted out, even theatrically organized. The best aspects of the movie are just these tensions between the central character’s—Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper)—equally maniac insistence upon a happy ending to his previously troubled life, while at the same time hinting that it may not truly “play out” that way anymore than a football game, his equally maniacal father’s (Robert De Niro) drug of choice. Father and son both bet their lives’ happiness on a series of ridiculous parlays with fate. And accordingly, the power of Russell’s comedy is that, at any moment, it might turn into a violent tragedy, the lightness of its offbeat tone tumbling into a depressing revelation of the effects of mental illness. The movie, much like Pat’s mental situation, is dependent on the highs and lows of bipolar situations.
The nightly shouting matches, the violent encounters between father and
son, and later, the unpredictable and often brutal honesty of the woman with
whom Pat becomes involved, Tiffany Maxwell (Jennifer Lawrence), keeps us—at
least throughout the early part of the film—on the edge of seats as the roller
coaster dynamics of the character interactions are played out time and again.
At some moments the quick shifts of relationships make it almost unbearable to
watch.
That is surely why the director, after he has established those
tensions, suddenly shifts in an entirely different direction, moving his film
from an intense examination of disturbing family relationships into a romantic
comedy that, at times, seems to trying to channel Baz Lurhman’s Strictly Ballroom, as the obsessed Pat
attempts to regain his wife by dancing his way, with dance teacher Tiffany, to
health, or as he describes it into “Excelsior,” a world that moves him always
on and up. It’s there that Russell loses me. We may all desire the happy
endings that Pat expects in his self-assigned reading, but such depictions are
often difficult to believe, and here they seem absolutely perverse.
Let us just briefly examine the characters Russell has begun with, a
rogue’s gallery of true American loons. Pat, as I have already mentioned, has
been suffering for most of his life from bipolar disorder, and has taken
himself off his needed medication. Previous to his incarceration, Pat has
nearly killed a man whom he discovered in the shower with his wife. Even though
his wife has left him and sold their home, posting a restraining order against
her husband, Pat is determined to win her back.
His mother, Dolores (the wonderful Jacki Weaver) is a kind of passive-aggressive woman, secretly—without her husband’s knowledge—removing her son from the institution in which it is clear he needs to remain for a further period. Although she pretends a life of devoted homemaking, spending much of the movie cooking and baking for her husband’s and friends’ incessant football game gatherings, she steers her husband through the rocky relationship with a heavy dose of comic placidity.
Her husband, Pat Sr., the diehard football fan, suffers from various forms
of compulsive-obsessive behavior manifested in his belief in a series of
illogical talismans of good luck, demanding that the television controls be
placed in a particular position while holding a green (he is an Eagles’ fan)
handkerchief in his hand, his younger son by his side. More importantly, he is
extremely violent, having beaten up so many fans of the opposite teams he has
been banned from the stadium. We see that extreme violence played out as he
pummels his son, the whole family loudly shouting, in the middle of one night.
Having lost his pension, the father currently survives as a bookmaker,
illegally processing small-time bets on the Eagle games in his home office.
Pat’s new friend, Tiffany, has been fired for having sex with
everyone—11 men and women—in her office, and offers up sex to Pat upon their
very first meeting; he declines. Although attempting to now abandon her previous
behavior, she admits:
I was a slut. There will
always be a part of me that is dirty and
sloppy, but I like that,
just like all the other parts of myself. I can
forgive. Can you say the
same for yourself, fucker? Can you
forgive?
Pat’s best friend, lives in a seemingly happy relationship with his wife
Veronica and their new child, but later admits that he daily feels he is being
crushed by his demanding job and his dominant and aggressive wife, Tiffany’s
sister.
The world of Russell’s South Philadelphia is perhaps no different from American life in any other place—which is to say it is filled with violence, aggression, deceit, and self-deception.
Even more fantastically, she convinces
Pat Sr’s football-watching buddy to bet all the money he has won from the elder
Pat on his favorite team, the Cowboys—suddenly seeming to know everything about
everyone in the room whom she has, in the terms of film, never before met. I am
willing to conjecture that it is a close neighborhood, but we have previously
been given no real evidence of it. Even more incredibly, the men agree to the
bet, but only with a second stipulation, a parlay, that includes the dance
competition in which the young couple is planning to enter. Despite their
amateur status, they must score at least 5 out of 10.
The younger Pat refusing, at first, to go along with the bet, finally
agrees when he is told—a lie to which even his honest mother joins in—that his
former wife will be present, and that dancing with Tiffany may convince her of
his return to normality.
When the former wife actually does show up to the competition, Tiffany
is horrified, afraid that she will now lose Pat. In short, we suddenly realize
that her dance aspirations have all been in an attempt to trap her new
boyfriend into a permanent relationship!
The Eagles win the game of course; and the unlikely couple is awarded
the necessary score of 5! Pat Sr. winds up with enough money to now open up the
restaurant of his dreams. Pat and Tiffany reveal their unspoken love for one
another, and all’s well that ends well in the claustrophobic living room of the
Solitano house.
Bah! All right, call me Scrooge! But I went home from this movie a few
days before Christmas with a sour taste of mendacity in my mouth.
Los Angeles, December 15, 2012
Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (January 2012).
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