A retrospective look at ‘Silver Linings Playbook’:
In an online writers’ discussion group, a poet (of course) friend of mine stated her rule of thumb for creating a piece: “I give it to my friend to read, and if she tells me she likes it because she ‘gets it’, I throw it out. ‘Getting it’ shouldn’t be the goal of writing—if you want something accessible, go read a dishwasher manual.” This is a surprisingly ubiquitous (though not usually put that bluntly) attitude among artists. An anti-populist streak runs through their creative processes, I think mostly out of a fear of selling out. If a mass audience understands what you’re saying or trying to do, then it’s generic, defanged crap, these people seem to be saying.
I have to admit I’ve never understood this mindset. Any art, and writing in particular, has always seemed to me to have as its primary goal communication, a way of connecting the creator’s ideas/message/point to his or her intended audience. Deliberately obfuscating what you’re trying to say negates that purpose, and as a result any art specifically not created for that goal becomes masturbatory, since your only intended audience is yourself. Maybe I’m just pedestrian, but it’s probably because of this sensibility that I have such a particular fondness for David O. Russell. Russell’s films have always had a populist streak to them, though only recently has it become obvious, as he establishes himself as the Director of the People.
Ten years ago, that title would have seemed ludicrous. He started out by making off-beat, not to say obscure, comedies like Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, moved on to overlooked political drama in Three Kings, and ran into a helluva lotta trouble with I Heart Huckabees. That latter film was marred by both reviews that at best left critics puzzled (existential detectives? Huh?) and by an infamous behind-the-scenes video showing Russell’s very un-people-friendly blowup with actress Lily Tomlin. He was more or less a mainstream Hollywood outcast as a result, labeled as basically too difficult for anyone to understand or get along with to get any kind of profitable work.
And yet, look again, and it’s difficult not to see the theme of humanism running through each and every film he makes. It’s a humanism that reaches far and wide, from the very personal journey of an adopted child trying to find his parents in Flirting to the truly egalitarian discipline that he extends to all of the characters in Three Kings. In Kings, the same human qualities are distributed evenly to the refugees and to the American soldiers, and most impressively to the Iraqi soldiers in Sadaam’s army.
Better yet, Russell extends the humanist benevolence he bestows upon his characters to the audience watching them. What is I Heart Huckabees, after all, if not an effort to break down complex existentialist philosophy into digestible, comprehendible explanations? “Imagine this blanket is Everything,” explains Dustin Hoffman to Jason Schwartzman, getting him to wrap his head around the concept that “everything’s the same even if it’s different.” (And the reviews criticizing it as confusing are simply incorrect, especially since Russell understood fully what a weird beast he had on his hands, poking fun at the jargon he uses: “Have you ever transcended time and space?” “Yes. No. Well, space, not time. No I have no idea what you’re talking about.”).
The Fighter was a comeback story in more ways than one, both that of its protagonist Mickey and Russell himself, who was allowed back into the fray with the help of producer/friend Mark Wahlberg. And The Fighter almost overflows with its humanist sensibility. Not only is it the tale of an underdog, local-boy-made-good, but under Russell’s direction it refuses to make its characters be anything they’re not. They begin as blue-collar, drinking, fighting, swearing, smoking working people, and they end that way, too—no one needs to change who they are in order to succeed.
All of this is to say that Silver Linings Playbook threatens to tip this populist goodwill over the edge almost into straight-up convention and cliché, and is all the more impressive for ultimately dodging that threat. It certainly looked awful from the trailers: clips of dance sequences that made it look like a cash-in from the popularity of (of all things) Dancing with the Stars, a horrible title, and the presence of Robert DeNiro (which, sadly in recent years, is a surefire sign a movie is going to suck) all made it look like Russell was at long last making something bland. And it’s not as if the film isn’t conventional: indeed, it’s so conventional it’s almost corny, what with its dance montages and its Wager-Upon-Which-Everything-Hangs cliché. You could argue that all of that stuff is actually just more humanism/populism (I’m sorry to keep equating the two terms, but in this context they really are the same) in that easy conventions and cliché help to court a mass audience, help to communicate what you have to say. My poet friend, of course, would probably argue that getting a mass audience to see your movie isn’t necessarily humanist as it is capitalist, unless what you have to say is worth a damn.
Fortunately, it is, indeed, worth a damn. Russell’s message here seems to be that connection relies on acceptance of another human being, flaws and all, rather than the standard Hollywood-movie idea of changing to suit another person’s needs. To best highlight how SLP does this, let’s compare it with a pretty similar film, As Good As it Gets. AGAIG was also the story of a damaged widow trading witty banter with a mentally unstable man, butting up against each other until they found love. But in AGAIG, Nicholson’s Melvin Udall very specifically has to change who he is in order to win Helen Hunt’s Carol over (“You make me want to be a better man,” is the most romantic line in the film, if anyone remembers). SLP does no such thing. Pat (Bradley Cooper)’s bi-polar disorder is certainly a problem with which to be dealt (and he does—he takes medication eventually, so any criticism that the film doesn’t take mental health seriously is simply erroneous). But it’s also a part of who he is. He tries to “better” himself for his ex-wife by working out and reading her class syllabus, but Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) doesn’t need nor want him to do any of that. She says, “There’s always going to be a part of me that’s sloppy and dirty, and I like that part of myself, along with all the other parts. Can you say the same?”
SLP is a challenge for Pat to do just that—accept the crazy parts of himself along with the saner ones. And on a broader scale, Russell challenges audiences to do that: accept. Accept his characters, accept each other, accept ourselves. It’s a remarkably humane message, and one too seldom implemented by the films we watch—or at least the ones we value as art. Sometimes getting a lot of people to like what you do is not necessarily indicative of poor quality. Indeed, sometimes it suggests just the opposite.
About Ted McLoof
Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.