Silver Linings Playbook

Over my gloriously long, much needed weekend, I watched Silver Linings Playbook with my friend, and I was surprised by how much I genuinely enjoyed it. What initially drew me to watching it is the fact that Jennifer Laurence is one of the main characters in the story, and I find her to be a brilliant actress in whatever role she plays. I love to watch her act, so I figured that the movie must be pretty good if she’s in it. But I started the movie with the assumption that it was going to be another cliché romance movie about how the guy gets the girl and they live happily ever after. It was a nice surprise that it wasn’t like that at all.

                It does have a happy ending, that’s true, but the story itself is more complex than I had anticipated. It caught my interest as soon as the movie started, because you discover that the main character Pat had been admitted to a mental health institution. It’s not often that you see movies address mental problems so bluntly; mostly, they are glorified and made to seem like you can simply overcome them. That’s what’s so great about this movie: Pat goes through the story thinking that he’s just going to get better, but instead you see him continue to struggle with his bipolar disorder. Mental illness isn’t something you can wish away. You can learn to live with it, sure, but it won’t completely go away.

                And when he meets Tiffany, you see things go even more in depth with how depression can affect someone’s life. At one point in the movie, Tiffany makes a point of telling Pat that she’s not crazier than him, even if he thinks she is. I find that to be so true. Just because someone’s problems are different than yours, doesn’t necessarily mean they have it worse or better than you. It’s just different. It also makes a point of how no one can really understand what you’re going through unless they experience it themselves. People who have common experiences in life can connect through what they’ve been through.

It also emphasizes that even if you don’t understand, support is so, so important. You constantly see throughout the movie that Pat’s parents go back and forth between trying to control him and trying to support him. People who are imbalanced for whatever reason need stability, and they need someone who is willing to help them achieve that. Yelling and getting frustrated doesn’t help anyone; patience is huge.

As someone who is looking to go into the mental health field, this movie was refreshing and really made me excited to be that person who could improve someone’s life.