I have a firm policy that I generally never see a movie adaptation until I have read the book it is based off of. I’m a die-hard believer that the book is almost always better than the movie and I like testing my theory and paying attention to how a film renders a novel visually. After hearing rave reviews all year about Silver Linings Playbook, I read the novel and absolutely loved it. I was so excited to see the film because there was so much hype about it, especially after Jennifer Lawrence won an Oscar for her performance and the film received a Best Picture nomination.
I’m sad to say that I was completely and utterly underwhelmed by this film. There were some moments that felt right but for the most part, the film felt like a stale rom-com where the characters are supposedly suffering from ‘mental illnesses’ that manifest themselves in nothing more than outbursts of anger. I’m going to try to avoid just bitching about how the movie messed up the book, but there are a few relevant points that I feel like I have to make and they tie in to greater issues that I have with cinematic adaptations of books.
First, the book is ruthlessly dedicated to capturing Pat’s struggles and gives the reader first-person insight into his mind. The book is beautifully written and manages to present Pat’s hysteria in a way that we not only understand but that seems completely logical to us. The film, on the other hand, seems like it does everything possible to present Pat as ‘troubled’ but not too crazy. What were written as crippling, full scale mental breakdowns come off onscreen as no more than outbursts of anger from a hotheaded man. The problem with most book-turned-movie adaptations is that the film cannot convey the narrative voice of the novel, particularly if the novel is written in first-person narration, and so the film ends up telling us the story of the book without all the psychological and mental insight that makes the story so complex and interesting. One recent (and relevant) example of this was The Hunger Games adaptation, which also features Jennifer Lawrence. The novel was written in first person and half of the beauty of the novel is the complexity of Katniss’ character; she is simultaneously disagreeable, bitter, kind, courageous, and naive, and we love her for it. The film (despite Jennifer’s excellent performance) loses a lot of depth because we have hardly any insight into her character. We lose integral parts of the story, like the fact that Katniss is essentially faking her love for Peeta for the cameras in the arena in order to keep them both alive, because we have no idea what’s going on in her mind.
I think the biggest problem with Silver Linings Playbook is that the film loses nearly all of Pat’s psychological insight. It’s a book about mental illness, for goodness sake, the film was destined to fall flat from the start. If the loss of insight into Pat’s mind wasn’t bad enough, the film seemed scared to really commit to depicting Pat and Tiffany as people who are truly struggling with mental illness. Silver Linings Playbook works hard to make them seem a little off without making them full blown crazy. As I mentioned, a large part of the novel’s charm is that it fully fleshes out Pat’s severe mental illness without sugar coating anything while also making Pat’s mental processes seem almost logical. I really wanted to see the film delve into Pat’s psyche and I think there was a lot of opportunity for creative exploration and stylistic experimentation in conveying Pat’s mental state but the film didn’t really try. There were a few moments where the film almost gave me what I wanted, like when Pat recounts walking in on Nikki and another man and how that triggered his mental breakdown. Pat narrates the memory and we experience him reliving it verbally while seeing the memories. The images are shaky, shot with a handheld, and jump cut to evoke the hysterical moment and the frantic passage of time as Pat rushes to find his wife with another man. The camera inhibits Pat’s point of view as he frantically discovers this shock but then the image cuts back to Dr. Patel’s office before we see Pat’s breakdown. We see the trigger but not the reaction that got him locked away, and that just seem fair. The film is afraid to show us the crazy.
The first third of the novel takes place in the mental institution as Pat waits to get out and a large part of the story arc is that a) Pat has no idea how long he was in the mental hospital because he has repressed it, b) he does not remember Nikki cheating on him, which is the incident that trigged his mental collapse and c) that Nikki never comes back despite Pat’s desperate belief that she will. Matthew Quick’s Pat is deranged, delusional; David O. Russell’s Pat is quirky and has a little baggage. I think the film is too afraid to commit to portraying real, cold, hard mental illness; it allows Nikki to come to the dance performance, validating Pat instead of forcing him to admit that it his obsession with reuniting with Nikki is a delusion like he has to in the novel. I get that that’s a dark topic but I think it could have been handled with taste and still with an air of comedy instead of trying to force the issue of mental illness into a formulaic rom-com mold.
Stylistically, there are moments where it really seemed like the film was trying to experiment, trying to do new things. For example, Russell worked a lot with spaces and I noticed attempts to avoid shot-reverse-shot in favor of more explorative camera work during conversations. Another stylized camera moment is when a police officer shows up to Pat’s house and the camera does what one critic called a ‘Dash Milhok’ on the police officer, rapid zooming on his face the moment the door opens and then quickly cuts to his badge, then his nametag, and back out to a medium shot. I would have liked to see more of this experimentation, particularly used in a more psychological way.
One aspect of the film that I actually enjoyed was its use of music. The soundtrack felt very rich to me and even though it is a rom-com, I felt like Silver Linings Playbook had more music in it than a typical rom-com. There were a few times where the music merely provided an excuse for a cheese-y montage (i.e. the workout montage, the coming home from the hospital montage, the dance studio montage), which I could have used a little less of. There were also moments though, like in Dr. Patel’s office when the Kenny G. song plays and outside the diner where Pat hears the song again, where the film seemed to be using the music for a greater purpose than simply to manipulate our emotions. Here the film plays with the divide between diegetic/nondiegetic to evoke moments of confusion in the viewer where we don’t know if the music is non-diegetic, diegetic but only in Pat’s mind, or actually emanating from a diegetic source within the scene. Outside the diner, Pat is hysterical and we hear the song; it appears to be diegetic but we’re not sure if it’s playing outside or just in Pat’s head. Then Tiffany tells him “There’s no song” and the song cuts, suggesting the song was indeed a figment of Pat’s hysteria. These were moments I wanted to see more of, where the audience feels Pat’s confusion and mental illness with him rather than just witnessing it from a distance. The Kenny G. was such a huge trigger for Pat in the novel and I think the film could’ve capitalized on it more though—if I recall correctly, the Kenny G. song that he hears when he walks in on his wife with the history teacher can barely be heard, despite the fact that it is this HUGE mental trigger for him. I really wanted to be berated by that song, I wanted it forced down my throat and jammed into my brain repeatedly until it was a trigger for me and I understood Pat’s struggle with the song. But the film didn’t give it to me and is just another example of how the film plays it safe with the psychology in an attempt not to alienate any rom-com enthusiasts.