"You gotta pay attention to the signs": 10 questions about Silver Linings Playbook
2) When Pat's father (Robert De Niro) weeps in front of his son in remorse for "not spending enough time" with him when he was growing up, should the viewer be thinking that De Niro should feel remorse for appearing in New Year's Eve, Little Fockers, Meet The Fockers, and The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle?
3) Similarly, did director David O. Russell have Chris Tucker as Pat's crazy friend Danny reappear randomly in the film just because he knows we are happy to see Chris Tucker in a movie at all?
4) Given the dance contest at the end, couldn't someone have found some occasion for Pat to say "Nobody puts baby in a corner"?
5) I don't come from a sports-related family, so I don't get all of the movie's talk about characters having "juju" in relation to the next Eagles football game. Pat Sr. thinks of his son as a totem of luck for the Eagles. Isn't that all simply associative magic?
6) When confronted with his older brother Jake's (Shea Whigham) snotty sense of superiority, Pat (Bradley Cooper) says "I've got nothing but love for you brother." Later, in a climactic scene, director David O. Russell positions a picture of Jesus behind Pat. Does Russell mean for the viewer to make a connection between Pat and Jesus, and isn't that precisely the kind of association that manic people make?
7) In one scene, Pat throws a copy of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms out of the window. At another time, Tiffany throws a copy of William Golding's Lord of the Flies out of her back door. Does Silver Linings Playbook have something against literature?
8) Isn't a bit convenient how Russell keeps using the same meet-cute device of having Pat bump into Tiffany while running?
9) Given the complex political ambiguities of David O. Russell's excellent Three Kings (1999), wherein an American soldier gets tortured by a Kuwaiti who obliges him to drink motor oil, why couldn't David O. Russell have made Zero Dark Thirty?
10) Given Pat's frequent talk of resisting negativity, his tendency to say lines like “Most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day," how does Russell manage to not make a schmaltzy sentimental mess of a movie? How does Silver Linings Playbook manage to succeed in spite of its glib treatment of mental illness and its cheesy romantic comedy conventions?
Comments
Answers to your other questions: Yes, sports fans can be superstitious crackpots. And it's revealed later that Tiffany keeps running into Pat because she asked Pat's mother about his jogging routes.
And, I agree also about ZDT. Amazing that Bigelow could take the biggest "success" in the war on terror and give it a downbeat feel....
Yes it was clear Pat's mom talked with Tiffany about when and where he was running.
When both of you are talking about the ending of ZDT....is that a complaint or a praise that it's a downbeat ending? We all know that was the POINT. Just checking because I couldn't figure it out from your tone.
I have nothing against Bigelow as an action director, but I have major problems with ZDT (as I tried to explore through links in recent posts). In Three Kings, Russell conveyed the Gulf War with much more ideological dissonance than ZDT ever does.
I agree that Silver Linings mostly works due to the acting, but Russell deserves some of the credit too.
Other than an extremely general milieu ("Middle East"), I don't see much in common between ZDT and THREE KINGS - the latter being, among other things, a satirical comedy, which needless to say ZDT isn't. I like Russell's movie quite a bit too. It's wildly original, but I do think he pulls his punches at the end.
Haha but this post was about SLP. I don't think I would want to see a ZDT directed by Russell.
As you say, Jon, we are supposed to be discussing Silver Linings Playbook.
8. That's not a plot hole. Tiffany stalks Pat.