People are very surprised when I tell them that David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook was the best movie of 2012. They expect me to say Lincoln, or The Master, or Moonrise Kingdom, but not a flick with an unattractive poster, an indecipherable title, Bradley Cooper and Chris Tucker. Those who did see the film, who weren't as enthusiastic about it as I was, remind me of my skepticism toward Hollywood movies, with their heavily plotted story lines and their mandated happy endings, and wonder why I gave the film not one but two viewings, with a likely third on the way. Only one friend, whose passion for film exceeds my own, really got it. He called Silver Linings Playbook the return of a Billy Wilder-type film, a comedy for grownups. That's what it is, and that's why it's important to give it credit for rescuing the romantic comedy from the chick-flick graveyard.
The romantic comedy demonstrated the best of Studio Era Hollywood, as it depicted highly erotic courtship within tight constraints during the Production Code era. In order to attract an audience that expected sex from the beginning but would not mind if they were denied sex even after the closing credits, directors paired Katharine Hepburn with Cary Grant or James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart with Audrey Hepburn, Gary Cooper with Barbara Stanwyck, or, in the case of The Apartment (1960), Billy Wilder matched Shirley MacLaine with Jack Lemmon. Neither actor dominated the other, or they took turns bending the other to their wills; the films were vehicles for neither star, or both stars. Of course, many films flopped due to lack of chemistry between a man and a woman. The most memorable of the movies, however, proved how difficult, yet how rewarding, it was to watch two adults sparring with brilliant dialog and charisma as their chief weapons, if not their only tools. What marked classic romantic comedy was its subordination of the romance to a compelling story involving the development of characters, even if it felt to the audience that the plot was just an excuse for love to flourish. Mainstream feminist film critics, such as Molly Haskell, Marjorie Rosen and Jeanine Basinger, have viewed the classic Hollywood romantic comedy as a golden opportunity for featuring equality between the sexes, as women held their own against men.
The Sixties, and the shift from a universal Production Code to a more permissive, if ultimately confusing and politically motivated ratings system, encouraged the proliferation of many genres, including the Western, the detective story and horror, but it diminished the power of the romantic comedy. Another, possibly more powerful influence, reduced the genre, as women’s roles diminished, and “bankable” women stars virtually disappeared for well over a decade. Starting with the late Seventies, however, with one example being Woody Allen’s Annie Hall (with Diane Keaton opposite Allen), a reversal took place. Unfortunately, as the 20th century came to a close, the romantic comedy appeared to be quite different from the canonical works of the Studio Era. Women were, for the most part, restored to “bankability,” as Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan and Melanie Griffith proved that they could draw a sizable audience.
What never returned, or appeared so rarely as to seem the exception to the rule (Allen’s works, mainly), was the maturity of the better works, the substance of the narratives that reminded audiences that the love story shared the screen with interesting stories and characters. The characters seemed stock, one-dimensional and predictable, and the plots were mere springboards for the insipid roles played by actors who got a chance to demonstrate more charm than talent. As promising as Nora Ephron was as a journalist and budding screenwriter, her films weakened the romantic comedy genre as a whole. Entire productions were constructed around a single star, sometimes male but usually female, and the foil was decidedly inferior. Even when there seemed to be an even match, as in the case of Notting Hill, with the often imposing Hugh Grant falling for Julia Roberts, the plot was threadbare. The genre took on a new nickname, one reflecting its increasingly diminutive status. Just as “the women’s picture” (of Davis, Crawford, Joan Fontaine and Olivia DeHavilland) became, by 1980, the “chick flick” (of Roberts, Bullock and Ryan), the “romantic comedy” earned the prosaic title of “rom com.”
Before I discuss Silver Linings Playbook in detail, in order to emphasize the practical miracle performed by David O. Russell on this moribund genre, I would like to mention the first time I became aware of Bradley Cooper. It was in a chick flick/rom com entitled Failure to Launch, a name which said more than was intended, I think. I can’t even remember the name of the female lead, and, while I could look it up on imdb.com, it might not be worth the effort. The male lead, however, I remember, because the flick was yet another job for Matthew McConaughey, who had been banished to the rom-com purgatory after eccentric behavior, including a drug bust, derailed his upward climb toward stardom as the new next Paul Newman. (To be fair, I must mention that 2012 was a redemptive year for the actor, as he shone in Magic Mike and Bernie, and gave audiences a chance to see once more what Richard Linklater saw in him during the making of Dazed and Confused.) In Failure to Launch, Matthew McC played a charming womanizer who refused to grow up, living with his parents (played by the unlikely but winning couple of Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw), and going to yoga class with his buddies, one of whom was Bradley Cooper, who functioned as a sort of Eve Arden to McConaughey’s Barbara Stanwyck. With a pretty face that registered charming bemusement as well as goofy abandon, and a dazzling white smile that almost upstaged his captivating stare, Cooper showed great promise for...something. He spent years in rom-coms and gross-out teen boy comedies, particularly The Hangover series, in which he registered aging frat boy charm more than the compelling vulnerability required of a true movie star. Limitless started out as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-reliance on medicine to cure social ills but ended up another capitalist tycoon superhero fantasy, and it seemed to doom Cooper to a career of generic forgettables. In a risky but glorious move, the actor became executive producer of David O. Russell’s latest picture, as well as its male lead.
Based on a novel, Silver Linings Playbook could have been a J.D. Salinger imitation, the self-absorbed, sarcastic tale of a mentally ill young man and his battles with the world around him. It could also have been a domestic drama, similar to the returning soldier narrative, showing the awkward adjustment of a disturbed son returning to the family home. Possibly it could have been the indictment of modern medicine that Limitless set out to be, without the science fiction undertones and the action flick carnage. Instead, Russell decided to take elements from all three of those approaches and combined them with the chief characteristics of the classic romantic comedy, with man and woman evenly matched, battling each other as well as their own internal conflicts, against a backdrop of interesting, human, funny and substantial supporting characters.
While it is undeniable that this film is Bradley Cooper’s showcase, proving to the world his facility at conveying the complex undercurrents of the golden boy without defaulting into the narcissism of Seventies Robert Redford or pre-AARP aged Paul Newman, the film would not have worked without the force of nature that is Jennifer Lawrence. Her previous successes, Winter’s Bone and The Hunger Games, displayed alpha-female power in a woman barely old enough to vote. However crass Lawrence has appeared on awards shows and on interviews, seemingly too baldly ambitious and arrogant to be tolerated by a fickle audience. no one cannot acknowledge her prodigious talent and amazing star quality. The thrill of Silver Linings Playbook lies in the discovery of her flair for comic timing, and her willingness to show the fragility of her character’s outlook on life as often as she sports her bravado. As Cooper’s parents, Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver are sweet, humble, appropriately worried and eccentric without being grating or, for even one second, false.
The film has been released for months now, rendering a plot summary not only less necessary but possibly in danger of spoiling the mysterious appeal of Silver Linings Playbook. This can be said: Pat (Cooper) leaves a mental institution, where he was held and medicated following a violent attack that ruined his marriage, and he struggles to find his place in a town that won’t let him forget the past while refusing to let him face the past, and he wonders whether to return, Gatsby-like, to his old love or to sort the problem out for himself. He stops his medication, only to resume it when he inflicts his violent energy upon his parents. His desire to reconcile with his wife, who has a restraining order against him, is a single-minded pursuit that both gives him a reason to live and keeps him from having a life. Not until he is forced to meet Tiffany (Lawrence), the sister of the wife of his old friend, does he have an alternative to his monomaniacal focus on the past. Their courtship is rocky, and the film alludes to a variety of texts, from Cyrano de Bergerac to Simply Ballroom, as it shows how Pat and Tiffany become friends, despite or because of their mutual emotional instability. (Tiffany, a young widow, turned to promiscuity and pills in order to medicate her grief. Her story functions as a sobering counterpoint to Pat’s often self-inflicted psychological struggles, as well as his own self-obsessiveness.)
What reminds the viewer that this is, in the last analysis, a romantic comedy, and not a Paddy Chayevsky kitchen-sink drama or a Snake Pit investigation of mental illness, is the ensured presence of the happy ending. That there will be a happy ending is safe to mention in this review. What matters is HOW the film journeys toward that ending, and how happy, indeed, it will turn out.
I confess that I fell in love with Silver Linings Playbook in a way that made me uncomfortable as a film studies major. As I detect the mechanisms of the various genres referenced in a film, and as I evaluate how successfully a film upholds or subverts the conventions of a genre, I try to maintain a lack of “suspension of disbelief.” I concentrate on design, and note the skill with which characters, plots and twists are arranged, as if pieces on a chess board. While I managed to maintain such attention while watching Russell’s film, I also found myself disappearing into the diegesis (the world of the film), vanishing into the plights of Pat, Tiffany and their respective families, arriving to the point of talking back to the screen: “Don’t walk out now!” “You shouldn’t have said that.” “Don’t look there!” as if the characters could hear my comments. I cared about these people as if I knew them. I wanted to know them. I rooted for their triumph, as opposed to their failure, because I wanted the best for them. That really, really surprised me, and left me with no small sense of delight. (I also cried. Tears choked my throat after Les Miz, but the eyes remained scrupulously, mercilessly dry.)
I don’t think I would have enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook as much as I did, had tragedy not cast a shadow over the comedy and vice versa. In a way, tragedy and comedy were the equally-matched lovers in this film, as strong as Hepburn and Tracy, carrying on as if clearly aware that two conjoined is better than one left single. If the characters find happiness, not only did they earn it, but they appreciate it because sadness is just around the corner.
The film has won a lot of awards already, and is up for eight Oscars. Honors are pleasant, but they are best seen as marketing boosts. If a prize or two gets people to watch Russell’s film, then the ceremony serves its purpose. It’s also too soon to tell whether the movie will stand the test of time. I hope it does, as it reveals the sham that was Failure to Launch and all of those chick-flick/rom coms that audiences over 35 have been forced to endure for decades. It is my wish that Silver Linings Playbook leads the way toward a truly adult cinema.
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