Game Day

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So I watched "Silver Linings Playbook" a few days ago.

I thought it was good. Adorable, actually but Oscar worthy? I guess the Academy answered that question. But here's the thing, this movie has actually stayed with me. I find myself thinking about things that happened in the movie. Like today, I heard this groovy song from Train and I actually envisioned Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence dancing at that contest thingie to this song. Weird right?

I though about psychosis.
Bradley Cooper's performance made his character's mental issues palpable. I nearly felt his pain and I'd call that Oscar worthy but I guess it was a bad year to submit this work to the Academy against Daniel Day Lewis and a presidential performance. Either way, I found his character Pat Solitano as sympathetic and teetering on the edge of sanity completely believable. The Chris Tucker cameos were brilliantly amusingly heart-felt.

I thought about family.
When I think about family I also have think about dysfunction and there was plenty of that going on in this movie. Robert DeNiro played Pat's estranged father as a Philadelphia Eagle obsessed gambling addict, who insulated his own psychosis using his doting wife and his sacred ritualistic "game day".

I thought about adultery.
Cooper's Pat was a man wronged by his wife and discovered her in his shower with another man.  This event triggered his downward spiral.

I thought about fear.
The fear of thinking outside the box and that Tiffany, Jennifer Lawrence, represented all of those things to Pat, yet he somehow felt safe and continued to pursue the dance routine he agreed to perform in exchange for a favor. A dance routine performed by jock, ex teacher,  ex-mental health patient at a regional competition?

I though about love.
And the power of love. And how love makes us do things we would never even dream that we were capable of. And that if we believe in love, it just may work out for us, like it did for Pat and Tiffany.

And if a movie can make me think of all these things in the days since I watched it, then I wouldn't call that too weird. I would call that a silver lining.