Silver Linings Playbook
Dragged me mam off to see Silver Linings Playbook the other night. The trailer looked brilliantly funny and witty, and I fancied a night out with mam.
Bloody hell. This film is fantastic. I watched it the way a kid watches a grown-up wipe off their lipstick for the first time. It's not disappointment. It's looking at something take away its façade so that you can go, 'Hey. That's like me.' (I'm not diagnosing myself by the way, I just felt that I could identify with it).
Mental illness in films can go two ways in Hollywood. The first being a stereotypical mad woman who is mad for no apparent purpose and is just mad. The second, they delve into it too much and turn it into something perculiar and easily explained and frankly too normal for it to have any true understanding of.
The characters in this film are defensive of their own struggles against other people, yet they laugh about it amongst themselves. The hero isn't fully recovered, despite his protestations, and the heroines critical view on the world allows herself to see the problems in both of them and a natural remedy for them. Both cling onto the past. Both shun other company. They have a dozen faults, and yet you find yourself liking them far more than many of the other characters.
So it just goes to show that just because you have a mental illness, doesn't make you weird and unlikeable.
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