movie review - Silver Linings Playbook
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This is a movie in which a man returns to the house of his parents following an eight month stay in an institution. We learn that he was there because he badly beat his wife's lover after surprising them at the home he shared with his wife. He's off his meds but making an effort to stay out of trouble - and a return to the hospital. But trouble clings to our man like the garbage bags that he's taken to wearing. He fights with his father, he reacts outrageously when little things happen, and he veers between normalcy and overwrought screaming on a near nightly basis. But he reconnects with friends and brings a friend from the hospital into the broken life that he's trying to rebuild.
Almost immediately he meets a young widow who has her own share of problems and has been acting out at the same scale as our hero. They collide in a way that's certainly off the beaten path. The story eventually has trouble holding together the various moving parts and it's only toward the end that the final confrontation - which is about the family and not as we suspect about the estranged wife - that things actually come together. There's a love-story tacked on of course but it's far less convincing.
Recommended. The acting is tremendous and the story original. Much has been said about Robert de Niro but goddamn the man really is good. I think he outshines anything I've seen him in by a long way in this piece - all of the mugging and smirking is gone, he's just living a role. He's so good it borders on the distracting. And he's not alone, several of the other support actors are all in on this.