Watching Silver Lining's Playbook with a fifteen year old, renders me fearing that I may be unable to be fair to the movie. Then again, I was not overly impressed with it the first time around. In the words of the fifteen year old I am watching with, my little sister from another mother, "...it's kinda slow, even boring. This movie is like a steady pulse, there's no oomph..."
I tend to think that this movie starts out with a force that is not matched by the end. This story tells us the story of Pat Solitano, Jr (played by the genius force that is Bradley Cooper), a Bi-polar patient who had a mental break after finding his wife cheating on him and who has just been released. His aim upon release from the psychiatric hospital he has been in is to get fit, get his head right and get his wife back (if only he could get to her). Into the mix walks Tiffany Maxwell, a young widow who in her grief has also had psychological troubles, and who might just be able to get Pat contact with his wife - on condition he does her a huge favour.
By the end, my fifteen year old contributor has changed her tune, saying she, "...really enjoyed that movie..."
David O. Russell's adaptation of the novel of the same name, is an ode to trying to live life and find happiness in the face of recovery from the struggles of mental illness. I will say this, having mental illness within my family (some diagnosed, some in serious need) this movie to a large part really does play respectfully to the difficulties a family goes through when someone is mentally ill - some scenes playing incredibly close to home.
Now we all know that this is the movie that won Katniss Everdeen her Academy Award, and so in the watching of it she is immediately under the magnifying glass in terms of her performance, especially when you consider that she was up against brilliant performances by Naomi Watts in The Impossible and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty. I flounder, because in this regard, this time around, I am particularly impressed by her performance, and the chutzpah she embodies her character with (we all know Katniss could benefit from just a little more Aargh...).
But it is Bradley Cooper who for me is the true force of the movie, and who I think was well deserving of not only his nomination, but possibly of the win (and I admit that I still have to watch a lot of the performances of the year, but I am not a fan of Daniel Day-Lewis, feeling he is becoming the male Meryl Streep, although I do have a lot more appreciation of Meryl).
Throw into that the addition of further brilliant Oscar nominated performances by Robert De Niro as Pat's father, Pat Snr and of Jackie Weaver as his mother, and what you have is the 2nd movie since I watched American Hustle last week (also a David O. Russell film btw) which has nominations in all the categories I have flagged for required blog viewing - incidentally this was the first movie since 1981's Reds to have the distinction of having nominations in all six of these categories, so I guess I only got one more of these (unless there are others in 1979 and 1980 I don't know of).
Great movie, even with it's short-comings...
This is now the 4th movie watched from the 85th Academy Awards, and the 41st watched overall!
nuff said...
No comments:
Post a Comment