After the blood and violence of Django, the mental illness of Silver Linings Playbook was a nice change. Yes, I simply said, “nice.”
Don’t get me wrong, Silver Linings was a good movie, but I did not see in it the raves that it’s gotten. (Maybe I’m still numb from the shooting by QT. Not sure.)
Granted, I was oddly pleased by the mom’s portrayal of the dysfunctional wife and mother just keeping a family together, forever with a look on her face of fretting. (I was certain it was Sally Struthers, only to receive the correct information from my movie companion via text this morning. Thanks for the googling, DA!) And Robert De Niro was perfect in his role as the father—-just clueless enough, just ill enough, just loving enough, just bumbling. He made me sad, but he made me smile—-a sympathetic smile, but a smile nonetheless.
Also in this flick, I greatly appreciated the highlighting of who is committed to a mental institution isn’t so much about who is mentally ill but more about who happens to have that intervention. (After all, my current article takes me to the arguments of the problems of how many people are *not* committed who should be.)
And indeed, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, well, she’s a charm. Not traditionally, but she made me smile—-every bit of her inability to cope, her inappropriate choices, her vulgarity, and her innocence. Again, she was a charm.
If you haven’t gathered, the movie is replete with dysfunction and enabling behavior. It quietly reveals some of the issues with persons with mental illness and how the cycle works, but that was too quietly for me, too subtly. I wish it would have been a bit more informative about medication choices. But the movie, in my opinion, wrapped that up much too nicely. Even the police officer involved was too unrealistic for me; sure, maybe one is “assigned,” but he’s not the only one who responds.
—->Alas, as a person with a psych background and who teaches Mental Disability Law, well, maybe I’m too rough on the film. Still, where the movie could have highlighted the bigger problem of the revolving door of the criminal justice system as related to mental illness and the crucial role family plays in fostering problems through denial and enabling, it failed.
But this wasn’t supposed to be a drama, I suppose. And so, it’s a light-hearted look at a tough issue.
In the end, yes, it was a good movie. It was nice.