In Grad School, It's Always Important to Look for the "Silver Linings Playbook"

Dearests,

It's been about a month since I last checked in, in part because things have stayed relatively busy, but also because I've been contemplating the subject of my present post.

Happily, although the majority of the busy-ness has remained grad school-related, an ever-growing proportion of the busy has been self-care-y and fun things.  I have continued my commitment to go to a museum a week (museums visited in 2013: 9).  That practice alone has been instrumental in improving my overall life-enjoyment and sense of well-roundedness (which, as we know from rule #3, is critical to not going completely batty), both because of the exposure to cultural and educational richness and because it's successfully helped me engage in regular picture-taking.

Other self-care anecdotes:

1. By happy coincidence, my membership to my very most favorite local museum expired mere days after Match Day, meaning I could renew knowing that I would be here to enjoy it for at least the next year.  Given the way that timing worked out, I didn't even have to let my membership lapse.

Membership cards past and present: three years of awesome.

2. In spite of having a much more reasonable commute this year compared to last year, I've managed not only to continue a decent amount of leisure reading but also to restart my Murakami habit.  I was initially pretty intimidated by his most recent and most massive opus, "1Q84," but then my brother indulged me by getting it for me (in much more subway-friendly three-part paperback form) and I just couldn't resist it anymore.  I'm so enjoying it.  It's brilliant.

Mmmm.

So those small but nonetheless significant personal victories aside, as I mentioned, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about my plot for my latest post.  I want to write about a movie that's received a lot of acclaim, not least of which being a best actress Oscar for the delightful Jennifer Lawrence.  While the accolades seem well-deserved, I'm nevertheless still squirming a bit because of my reaction to the film.

I am of course referring to "Silver Linings Playbook" (2012).

I have to proceed carefully, since my delay in writing this post stems largely from my difficulty in organizing and articulating my feelings about this movie.  I suppose I'll start with the pros:

1. It is immensely well-acted.  There are moments of emotional rawness that feel so real they're hard to watch.  When Pat (played by Bradley Cooper) spirals into a paranoid and freaked-out panic because he can't find the wedding video chronicling his entry into his doomed marriage and his parents leap into the fray, I cringed at the realness of the ensuing chaos.  Pat Sr. (played by Robert De Niro) conveys the painful tightly-woundededness of someone with barely manageable lifelong OCD very convincingly.  Dolores (played by Jacki Weaver) vibrates with the nervousness and desperate positivity found only in the matrons of powder keg families such as hers.  Last but not least, Tiffany (played by Jennifer Lawrence) utterly losing her shit in a diner is, on the other hand, so deliciously unhinged it's mesmerizing.

2. It is a reasonably comprehensive snapshot of what mental health care can look like for the chronically and seriously ill.  There are revolving door hospitalizations.  There are legal and professional ramifications that can be difficult or impossible to erase.  There is the need for a lifetime commitment to care (and often to medication) and the simultaneous yearning, at times anxious and sad and at times frenzied and grandiose, to not need it.

3. It is a compassionate portrayal not just of the experience of the mentally ill, but of a mentally ill person who has some serious semblance of how to manage his care and his needs well.  Pat tries to give himself a schedule and take care of his physical health.  He gradually accepts that medication must play an everyday role in his life.  He attempts to maintain a positive outlook by looking for the glimmer of meaning and hope even in the darkest of his life's chapters.  He takes responsibility for his illness and its safe, effective management, both for his own good and the good of those around him.

That this is a compassionate illustration of the life of a seriously mentally ill person is very important.  The stigma of mental illness can be punishing and devastating, keeping afflicted people from achieving their full potential and from being more than just a diagnosis.  This story is important because it shows how even someone with a significant and at times dangerous disorder can be more than simply a walking time bomb.  He can forge and maintain relationships, he can have a good heart, he can set goals and attain them, he can start over again and again and retain the optimism and wherewithal to truly do better than he has done before.

Not only does this film help the mentally healthy to be more understanding and empathic toward the plight of the ill, but it also provides hope and modeling for those who suffer with illness of mind.  We, all of us, need this story and others like it.  Who among us would want the most difficult thing about us to define us entirely?

4. Also the soundtrack is pretty great.

Now for the cons, or rather, the con:

I'm really disappointed with the portrayal of Pat's wife Nikki (played by Brea Bee).

Spoiler alert, Pat's most recent hospitalization was precipitated by his beating nearly to death of his wife's lover after discovering the pair mid-affair.  He flew into such a manic, homicidal rage that he nearly pummeled someone to death.  We don't get to see Nikki's horror as this unfolds before her or how the remnants of this trauma play out in her mind.  Lost, of course, to the narrative is anything about her experience of her marriage to someone who was cycling through the peaks and valleys of unmitigated bipolar disorder.  We don't know what drove her to infidelity.  What we do know is that during the brief moments we see her, she appears cool and controlled to the point of being calculating and unfeeling.  We know that she refuses to speak to Pat, and that she's taken out a restraining order against our plucky hero.  We know that Pat's insatiable desire is to put his life back together, and that the only thing that seems to be standing in his way is his apparently resolute and heartless wife.

I don't buy that Nikki has to be a frigid robot ice queen for us to have some sympathy for Pat.  I certainly don't buy that Nikki deserves so small and two-dimensional a place in this story.  If Pat is a victim of his illness, then for godsakes, isn't she as well?

Notice who's missing?

What I am deeply unsettled by is the casting of these two characters in opposing roles competing for our affection.  I don't understand why this is the kind of story in which we must choose sides.  If the audience can be trusted to understand that Pat is more than just what makes him sick, that he is a whole and complex person who is worthy of love, forgiveness, and respect even when he has made horrible mistakes, why can't we be trusted to have the same love, forgiveness, and respect for Nikki?  Why is this a battle in which one person must win and the other person must lose?

I wonder, sadly, if this narrative were somehow reversed, if we would love and cheer for the female Pat quite so much.  I wonder why it's so easy to forgive Pat the man for what he's done but to write off Nikki the woman for her mistake.  Surely we can agree that almost killing someone is worse than cheating, even if both offenses are deeply wrong.  So why is Nikki's pain and struggle so easy to overlook?  What these narrative choices seem to tell me is that we differentially weigh feminine and masculine suffering, to the extent that we are willing to forget the former even exists.

Taking a step back from how sad that makes me, on a more superficial level I'm also sad because a more even and equal story would have been so much more interesting, challenging, and beneficial for all concerned.  I bet we could still love and forgive Pat even while spending more time with Nikki.  I bet we could tolerate their complexity and pain together and care for them both.

Too bad we weren't given the chance.

So in spite of the many things I liked and appreciated about this movie, they weren't enough to totally trump this oversight.  I gave "Silver Linings Playbook" a 4.5.

With that, time for other things.

{Heart}