Silver Linings Playbook: What are Happy Endings For Anyway?

            Legendary film critic Roger Ebert gave the following words in July of 2005 at the dedication of his plaque outside the Chicago Theatre:

Nights of Cabiria (1957)

“For me, movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. And that, to me, is the most noble thing that good movies can do and it’s a reason to encourage them and to support them and to go to them.”

Ebert had been reviewing films for coming on forty years when he gave that assessment. I haven’t been doing it for a tenth as long. I don’t know if I’ve really earned the right to pontificate in this same manner. But film critics new and old don’t need much prodding at all to offer such grandiose pronouncements, and so ...

If I had to guess what draws me into the swirling vortex of film criticism, my answer would probably be similar to Ebert’s. Good film reminds us that all of us are aspiring for happiness and truth. It reminds us that we are not alone in our search for meaning by allowing us to live another's experience on the big screen.

Which brings me to David O Russell’s 2012 masterwork, Silver Linings Playbook.

Based on Matthew Quick’s 2008 novel, “The Silver Linings Playbook,” the film is a romantic-dramedy about a man’s efforts to reunite with his ex-wife after he experienced a mental breakdown, which also unveiled his latent bipolar disorder. He sets out to reclaim his happy ending with his ex-wife only to learn that there's more than one road to happily ever after.

            It’s somewhat dangerous for film critics to call anything, even a fairly well-done piece of work, perfect, especially if that movie is less than like forty years old, and this can create an incentive for critics, particularly maturing critics (including myself in this class) to invent flaws that may or may not be in the text they are examining, to find excuses for why a film is merely good. But despite this all, I don’t think I’ve ever come out of David O Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook not believing I had just sat through a perfect film.

          I mean perfect in the sense that the movie is remarkably well crafted–the acting, writing, and directing are all on-point–but I also mean perfect in the sense of a film’s truer purpose: that of aspiring for (and occasionally catching) deeper truths about the human condition. It’s profound, but not sanctimonious. It’s optimistic, but not saccharine. It’s perfect. People can disagree with that assessment, and that’s just fine, but in light of this movie’s ten-year anniversary, I really wanted to unpack what it is that makes this movie, and maybe all movies, such essential tools for understanding this thing called the human experience.

I want to set the stage by looking back on the film’s success. From there, this essay takes a character study approach with our lead character, Pat Salitano. There are a number of contexts in which his story is especially fascinating–the suburban ideal, mainstream comedy, the cinematic hero, depictions of mental health–that I’d like to touch on here.

 

Victory Lap

            The start of the film sees Pat Salitano (Bradley Cooper) at a psychiatric facility, where he was sent after he had a violent mental breakdown in which he attacked his wife’s lover when he discovered them together in the shower. Against the advisement of the courts, his mother, Dolores (Jacki Weaver), elects to bring him home early. Once home, Pat has only one thing on his mind: win back the love of his wife, Nikki. What’s a little restraining order against true love?

            Pat has an encounter with a woman named Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence): an eccentric character still reeling from the recent loss of her husband. Pat is repulsed when Tiffany offers to have casual sex with him—doesn’t she know he’s still married?—but their shared experiences with mental health draw them together, and they strike up something like a friendship. Tiffany makes Pat an offer: dance with me at a professional competition, and I will sneak a letter to your wife.

            As Pat and Tiffany grow closer, they both naturally start to live as their best selves, which Pat’s family starts to notice. Pat entrusts Tiffany with a letter for his wife, and Tiffany returns with a letter that she says came from Nikki. As a gesture of faith, Pat’s dad (Robert de Niro) makes a bet with his business partner (that will determine whether he gets to make good on his plans to open a restaurant), part of which hinges on Pat’s performance at his dance competition with Tiffany.

At the dance competition, Nikki shows up to watch Pat, much to the distress of Tiffany, whose growing romantic feelings for Pat have become harder to ignore. They perform and–miracle of miracles–reach the exact score they need to win the bet. When Tiffany sees Pat going to Nikki after his victory, she runs off distraught. But in making peace with his ex-wife, Pat decides that his happy ending is not with Nikki, but with Tiffany. Pat runs after Tiffany, revealing that he knew that she forged Nikki’s letter and declaring his love for her. They embrace and take the first steps into their happy ending.

            Erik Kohn wrote in his review for IndieWire, “Russell gives ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ the air of a classic romcom, strengthening it with the type of sophisticated insight into human behavior that Preston Sturges might make today,” further calling it “a movie that explores the fear of overcoming challenges by making it possible to laugh at them.”

Ebert himself said, “We're fully aware of the plot conventions at work here, the wheels and gears churning within the machinery, but with these actors, this velocity and the oblique economy of the dialogue, we realize we don't often see it done this well. 'Silver Linings Playbook' is so good, it could almost be a terrific old classic.”

         The movie was nominated for 8 Oscars, including Best Picture of the Year. The film accrued nominations for not only writing and directing, but also all four acting categories, the first movie to do so in about thirty years. (They also got a nomination for editing. That one tends to go underreported.) I concede that the movie did technically lose to Argo (I promise I’m not bitter …) but won for Best Actress in Leading Role.

    At the time of release, much of the hoopla around the movie was anchored on Jennifer Lawrence’s masterclass performance, and it’s easy to see why. And while we're reflecting on the legacy of this film, we might as well reflect for a moment on Jennifer Lawrence.

Though she's about ten years younger than the character is described in the book and fifteen years younger than Cooper, Lawrence never feels out of her element. It’s one thing to see her stare down someone like Robert de Niro and not flinch, but Lawrence also imbues her character with a deep sense of humanity, a fearless vulnerability that reveals one of the most multi-faceted female performances in recent memory.

This was also the same year as her lightning performance in the first “Hunger Games” movie, revealing her as this rare unicorn who could walk both lanes: high art and popular entertainment. That she was so young when she broke out onto the scene (only 22 at the time, making her the second youngest actress to win Best Lead Actress and the first person born in the '90s to win any Oscar) only added to her thunder. But there was a downside to this firecracker entrance.

    After the “Hunger Games” movies wrapped up and she collected her fourth Oscar nomination, people started asking that most damning of all questions: “Jennifer Lawrence might be good, but is she really … that good.” It was around here that declaring that you were “over Jennifer Lawrence” made you cooler than liking her ever had, and this made her an easy target for certain websites to use her as a dartboard. (Lawrence also saw herself the victim of harassment when nude photos of her leaked online in 2014, which only opened the doors for a lot of victim-blaming.)

    In an interview with Vanity Faire last year, Lawrence shared,  

“I just think everybody had gotten sick of me. I’d gotten sick of me. It had just gotten to a point where I couldn’t do anything right. If I walked a red carpet, it was, ‘Why didn’t she run?’… I think that I was people-pleasing for the majority of my life. Working made me feel like nobody could be mad at me: ‘Okay, I said yes, we’re doing it. Nobody’s mad.’ And then I felt like I reached a point where people were not pleased just by my existence.”

    This phenomenon isn’t unique to Lawrence, but the internet is quick to forget just how mean it can be to people like her. It’s only been in the last year or so that the headlines have conceded that maybe it’s okay to like one of the most talented performers of her generation.

    I applaud how Lawrence handled the situation by just giving herself a breather from Hollywood life until she was ready to reenter the arena on her own terms. Just so, I can’t help but notice that these phoenix narratives congratulate Lawrence for getting back on her feet while ignoring who knocked her down to begin with …

So, yes, Jennifer Lawrence is a firework in this film, but Bradley Cooper meets her at every level. Cooper was thirty-seven when he starred in this film, but his performance gives off strong “first day of middle school” vibes. Even though he is the main player here, Cooper doesn’t get nearly the attention he deserves, and that's probably a part of the reason why I center so much of the essay on his character.

Pat Solitano: Unlikely Hero

    Pat is depicted as an aberration not just in the system of suburbia, but in the larger tradition of grand romantic heroes like those whom he wishes to emulate. He sees his mission to reunite with Nikki as a chivalric quest, but Pat isn’t quite the Clark Gable/John Wayne brand of cinematic hero.

The fallen man who has to get back on his feet is nothing new to the world of film, but such heroes have traditionally been defined along lines of raw masculinity. A character like Rocky Balboa could almost be said to be a patron of optimism in that he is an underdog fighting against insurmountable odds, but as with many film heroes, his quest is one that can be achieved through sheer masculine force. Rocky literally just has to fight someone. Meanwhile, Pat is not shown to possess the fiery drive that fuels someone like John MacLaine. 

    Pat has a lot more in common with someone like Christian from Moulin Rouge!, a bright-eyed songwriter whose veneration of true love is tested by the real world in all its cynicism and cruelty. In his case, that means loving a courtesan who is promised to a wealthy and powerful duke. Both Pat and Christian represent an idealism, almost an innocence, that runs against the wisdom of “the real world,” and much of the tension in their respective films comes from wondering what’s going to happen to them when they find out firsthand that life isn’t as nice as it sounds in the love songs.

Pat is fighting his own social awkwardness, the challenges of mental health, and the possibility that he is simply too naïve for this world, and this puts into question whether someone like Pat even has the capacity for the kind of heroism that he reveres or needs.

           There’s a scene very early in the film that spells this out very well. Pat is reading A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway, thinking it will impress Nikki, and when he reaches the story’s very unhappy ending, he has a meltdown in the middle of the night, waking his parents up just so he can rant about how unfair the ending is, close to tears the whole time.

On the surface, this is simply a comedic bit that most of us can relate to—who hasn’t felt personally betrayed by the ending of a favorite book, show, or film? But Pat’s reaction to a romantic hero not getting his deserved happy ending also reveals a lot about his hopes and fears. It suggests that there is no guaranteed happy ending for his own story, and that's a thought he can't stomach. In the novel, Pat actually has repressed memories of discovering Nikki's infidelity, implying that Pat was, at least as the start of the story, incapable of mentally processing a world in which his rosy worldview was compromised and that he had to distort reality in order abide by it.

Pat deliberately invokes terminology connected to the hero's journey in a way that borders on metatextual. It could be said that Pat has a form of main character syndrome in that he sees life as one big movie, and if he behaves like a good romantic hero, then he will be rewarded with a very specific happy ending. Such a mindset propels Pat to invest in certain ideas that might seem foolish but yield promising results, like working hard and living as your best self.

Silver Linings Comedy

    Another thing we need to establish early on is that the way this film employs comedy kind of ran counter to the attitudes of the day.

Arrested Development (2003)

    What you saw most often in mainstream comedy in the 2000s and early 2010s was the lead character being played as the most qualified person in the room only to be bogged down by the incompetency of their social network, usually their coworkers or their family. It’s easier to get your audience to go along for the ride with a character who gets to hang their head in true “why is this happening to me?” fashion.

    This played into a very pleasant fantasy for the 2000s breadwinner--"I could totally write my ticket if only my family/colleagues weren't a bunch of dopes." This was how America of the 2000s coped with the mundanity of modern living, by assuring itself that the other guy was the bigger ding-dong.

Modern Times (1936)

        That kind of humor hasn’t always been the default. Charlie Chaplin, one of the earliest film comedians, made his mark as this fish out of water who benignly but inevitably sowed chaos everywhere he went. Chaplin’s iconic “Tramp” character was somehow the butt of every joke, and yet his antics always revealed more about the faults of the world he occupied than the faults of his character. In a system that turns people into machines, the guy who holds onto his humanity is inevitably going to look and feel out of place. Chaplin empowered the underdog, the guy who extended charity where no one else would. His films had a very optimistic bend that extolled the necessity of human kindness and working for a brighter tomorrow.

    This approach is tricky for a number of reasons. You’re asking your audience to invest in a character instead of just laughing at them. It asks your audience to let their guard down and discover more about this character who might lack social grace but might offer something far more illuminating.

            Silver Linings Playbook betrays the comedic wisdom of its day in favor of something a little more Chaplin. Pat is never the most together person in the room, but he’s still played as sympathetic, both by the story proper and Bradley Cooper as a performer. And where his idiosyncrasies are initially played as awkward character quirks, his worldview reveals insights that are maybe lost on “normal people."

         Ten years on, this more sympathetic comedy has seen a comeback. It’s still not the default by any means, but more often we’re seeing comedies not only being sold on their appeal to human decency but finding widespread acclaim for doing so. Ted Lasso takes the social oddball, the guy you do not want to be coworkers with, and posits that his eccentricities cover not only genuine insight, but also internal battles and complexities. Audiences are starting to appreciate, or maybe just remember, the value of trying when the world tell you not to.

            One thing that separates Chaplin from his modern-day successors is that Chaplin was played almost like a cartoon character. His movies could touch on heavy topics (e.g. references to Jewish persecution in The Great Dictator) but there’s still a degree of exaggeration to his films that keeps them removed from reality. It’s hard to adopt this optimistic approach into a more grounded dramatic piece, but for the people who really need a silver lining, the payoff for making the jump anyway can be tremendous.

   Author Matthew Quick described his experiencing writing the book, saying, "I spent most of my life confused about why I had certain feelings. I didn’t have a vocabulary to talk about those feelings, because I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood, and the men in my life were largely from rough neighborhoods in Philly—they were taught to suppress emotions ... As I created Pat’s voice, I realized it was fiction, but I was starting to address a lot of things that I hadn’t addressed before. And of course when I published 'Silver Linings,' I was [asked], 'Why are you writing about mental health?' And it was terrifying at first, but it was very freeing. And I had friends who were coming up to me and saying, 'How did you know about this stuff? Because, [I felt this,] too.'"

    It was around the mid-2010s that portrayals of mental health started being normalized in the mainstream media, placing Silver Linings Playbook at around the start of the wave. We’d seen movies like Fight Club lift elements of mental illness, usually for added shock value, but Silver Linings Playbook was one of the first pieces of media to showcase mental illness in all its exhausting mundanity. Its presentation was neither sanitized nor sensationalized. Pat and Tiffany are normal individuals whose lives are shaped by their mental conditions but whose identities are also much larger than that.

            Part of what drew Russell to the project was the chance to explore the issues he saw in his son, whose experiences with mental illness colored his life. Said Russell, “I wanted to do it because it was an opportunity to make a movie about, in a way, matters that relate to my son. Matters that have felt challenging to him. To bring those challenges to light in a movie and give them a story, and with love, is really a healing thing for him and the whole family.” (His son even cameos as the neighborhood kid constantly asking if he can do a report on Pat’s mental illness.) Earlier this year, Collider writer, Charlie Moat, wrote of his experience watching the film as a man with bipolar disorder. Describing the scene where Pat has a meltdown over the book’s ending, he says,

“What's striking in this scene is the verbal flurry that comes from Pat as he tries to empty the racing thoughts in his brain. This is a feeling I know all too well. The frustrations are insignificant, and it can be hard to imagine having thoughts so strong about a book that you can't wait until the morning to air them. But this happens. A minor thought can spiral and wind up until it can no longer be contained, and all of a sudden what was once a small opinion now feels like a matter of urgency. What captured the moment so well in the movie was the pacing of Pat, and his inability to slow down. It's clear that the film's creators had some insight into what these moments can feel like …

“Mental illness can wreak havoc on somebody's day-to-day life, as I've felt personally, but there is no reason to give it the power to control your life. That's a message I took from Silver Linings. It was more than your typical happy ever after conclusion, it was a signal of hope to those struggling. Pat and Tiffany both experienced previous loves, job losses, various traumas, and of course their mental health battles, but they never gave up. Their story is proof to anybody feeling lost, that you can be found.”

           Pat recalls other optimists across film history like the titular hero in Forrest Gump or Elwood P. Dowd from Harvey. Those films also follow characters who represent a deviation from the social norm, and this is echoed both through some kind of mental diagnosis as well as their seemingly unfounded faith in human goodness and a benevolent universe. Said mental illnesses runs parallel to their optimism, pointing to the way that society views optimism or altruism as a kind of mental illness itself. Though people write off Dowd and Gump in their respective films, their communities come to appreciate their unique perspective and find themselves better off when they listen to them.        

But while their respective films hail them as moral pillars who deserve our consideration, neither Gump nor Dowd have particularly striking character arcs. They don't get to grow as individuals. They’re just kind of positioned like these Tiny Tim figureheads for the admiration of their community. Any character arcs or opportunities for growth come from the people who interact with them.

    There’s an element of enlightenment to implying that these kinds of characters shouldn’t have to change to be accepted, but at the same time they are denied the very human experience of learning and growing. And this is where Silver Linings Playbook shows more boldness than its predecessors. While Pat is similarly presented as possessing a certain wisdom that is unappreciated by society at large, Pat is also allowed the privilege to explore the messiness of the human condition and discover for himself where he fits into it.

            I see some try to criticize the film for implying that true love somehow cures mental illness, but this has never felt like an honest reading of the film. Tiffany and Pat are obviously in a much better place by the end of the movie, but nothing suggests that they are no longer living with their respective mental illnesses and no longer have to navigate those hurdles.

            An early plotline actively rebuffs one of the most commonly circulated myths about mental health–that if a person just tries hard enough, they should be expected to muscle through their attacks without the use of medication. Pat refuses his medication for the first third of the film and is confronted with the futility of this feat in a huge way when he has a late-night mental breakdown that culminates in him physically harming both of his parents, prompting police intervention. From there, we see Pat willingly taking his medication. We also see Pat in his therapy sessions with Doctor Patel, and this is shown to be a force for good in Pat’s life. 

The majority of the film focuses on Pat’s growth on purely human terms, of resolving the conflicts in his heart, but not before stressing the necessities of applying practical, medicinal solutions. Pat and Tiffany’s mental illnesses pose very real, very specific problems in their lives, but the way they’ve chosen to live with them has also given them unique skill sets, advantages not readily appreciated by society at large. 

                                           

Pat vs the World

          The root of any good story is a strong conflict, and Silver Linings Playbook offers this in layers. On the one hand, you have a strong man vs self conflict with Pat’s internal journey, but you also have a strong man vs society conflict in which Pat is competing against the disdainful eye of American suburbia.

Pat is positioned as a sort of victim of the domestic sphere, a system in which he is labeled as a failure. Pat’s wife has left him, and he’s back living at home with his parents in his thirties. He’s been judged by the world as not being able to cut it in the game of modern suburbia, yet he’s shown to possess a wisdom that is lost on many who “win” at this game.

Pat doesn’t take for granted many of the truisms accepted by the world. He doesn't play into their definitions of success. We see this early in his friendship with Danny, a recurring supporting character and friend that Pat made while he was institutionalized. But what really stands out in my book is how there are so many opportunities for this film to employ spiteful caricatures in retaliation, but that’s not the spirit of the film. The film holds itself to its own standard and consistently exposes the futility of any mindset that is anything less than egalitarian.

    A really solid example of this is the treatment of Veronica, the judgmental housewife of Pat’s friend, Ronnie. Veronica is positioned early on as an embodiment of domestic superficiality and judgmentalism. "Karen" with a capital K. Literally the first time we see her is when she’s barking orders at her husband outside from the top story window. She is hyperfocused on maintaining the image of the perfect suburban house and the perfect suburban housewife, and this causes her to keep a strangling grip on her husband and to view anything threatening that ideal as “less than,” and this naturally sets her against the graceless Pat.

           A close analog of Veronica might be American Beauty’s Caroline, played by Annette Benning. In that film, Caroline is positioned as your stereotypical nagging housewife. She devotes all of her time and attention to curtailing her family’s image to appear like the ideal 1999 home, which is probably why she has no energy left to spend on love, affection, or basic human dignity. This makes her, like everyone else in that movie, an ideal punching bag for the audience, which is why we are meant to take a sort of satisfaction in seeing Lester put her in her place.

            The natural impulse might be to just play Veronica in this way. But where the audience is meant to take delight in watching Caroline fail, the film expects us to see Veronica as a whole person. When the possibility of Ronnie divorcing Veronica is brought up, Pat urges Ronnie to not give up on the marriage.

Because Pat is himself kept out of the kingdom of suburbia, he can clearly discern where the system is unkind, even to those “in the club” like Ronnie and Veronica. Rather than growing jaded or resentful, he chooses to let his experiences make him more empathetic. And this is another thing that makes him such an appealing protagonist: he doesn’t ask for any grace that he isn’t himself willing to extend to others. This is one way where Pat’s unique brand of idealism, which can come off so easily like naivety or delusion, actually offers a healthy wisdom to a world that doesn’t always believe in happy endings or underdogs.

           Pat has a habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or missing social cues, and the film implies that he has a history of rubbing people the wrong way, like when he mentions getting into frequent arguments with the principal of the high school he worked at. And we see this thread echoed throughout the film as we see how associates, total strangers, and even close family members interact with Pat.

There’s a recurring motif where Pat’s social failures unfold out in the open on display to complete strangers, exposing the most personal parts of his psyche to individuals who only see him as an irritant or even entertainment. Pat’s awkwardness is endearing, yes, but only if you know up front that he is the main character of an Oscar winning movie. The film poses the possibility that if we encountered Pat in real life, we would not like him. If we came across him screaming in a therapist’s waiting room turning over bookshelves, we’d probably give him at least a stink eye.

One such scene has Pat teeter on the edge of a breakdown outside a movie theater. After Pat thoughtlessly makes a comment about Tiffany’s sexual history, she lashes out at him. This attracts the attention of a passing crowd, and the ensuing stress triggers an attack. The crowd watching Pat just acts like they’ve got front-row seats to an entertaining reality show. But we, the audience, understand that Pat is vulnerable in this state. He is liable to hurt not only himself but others as well, and that doing so will land him back in the treatment facility. There’s the potential for real damage to be done here, but none of the casual observers can see that, and maybe they wouldn’t care if they could.

            Pat finds an ally in Tiffany in no small part because she faces a similar front. (Tiffany's diagnosis is never specified in the film itself, though others have typed her as having borderline personality disorder.) In addition to this, or perhaps partly because of it, she is also saddled with a reputation of being sexually promiscuous, which makes her an easy target for society to belittle or demean her. There’s even an episode where Pat himself calls her a “loyal married-to-a-dead guy slut.” But Pat, like the audience, is made to see Tiffany in all her complexity. As Tiffany declares early in the film, “There will always be a part of me that is sloppy and dirty, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself."

The film’s climax at the dance competition turns the tables on a world that has judged Pat and Tiffany. The dance Pat and Tiffany perform for the evaluation of the judges acts as a microcosm for the life they are building as two oddballs trying to function in a society that is constantly telling them they aren’t good enough. The dance goes off as planned for most of the number, and you actually get the idea that they are going to stick the landing. But come the climax of the number, Pat and Tiffany fumble their big move, which results in an awkward moment where Pat is trying to lift Tiffany with his face stuck in her crotch.

    We then cut to a few shots of the judges and audiences cringing or laughing awkwardly, and then we get a few shots of Dolores watching the two of them perform this number that they have put so much effort into, and she gives a tearful motherly smile. Even as you have a whole audience of onlookers watching Pat and Tiffany fail, our gaze is aligned with Dolores'. We have seen how hard these two nuts have worked for their happy ending, and even as they stumble in a big way, we're bursting with pride.

            As the announcer reads off the individual scores, you hear onlookers laughing at their failure. But when the total comes out to exactly the score they needed to win the bet, Pat and Tiffany’s company erupts in cheers. No one has any idea why, and it is satisfying a billion times over.

    Part of that is just riding the wave of seeing your characters get what they've been working for. Part of that is also just the scale of their reaction reaching comical proportions. Watching this as a knowing audience member, you're sort of caught between needing to laugh at the sheer exuberance of the moment and wanting to howl alongside them because you know what it took for them to get here.

In Russell's words, "How can you have this where they win but it's also honest about who they really are? You don't want to have an ending where you feel like you get everything — because that's not real. And I love the ridiculousness of winning with a five … No one else understands why they won when they seem to have lost. I love that your personal victory is one only you understand.”

            This movie demonstrates what Ebert was talking about in his address. It’s only when you present someone like Pat in the center of a narrative that displays his efforts in the context of his hopes, dreams, and insecurities that most of us would give someone like Pat the time of day, let alone root for him. Any loser or oddball can be a hero if you bother to see them as a whole person. 

Happy Ending

    As I outlined in my essay on The Belle Complex, turning your lead into a moral pillar while also giving them a believable character arc is no easy task. How do you make Pat seem ahead of his time without denying him the necessity of growth, or creating a happy ending that feels hollow?

   A lot of this comes down to understanding the Venn diagram your film is building based off what arguments are being made: what does your protagonist believe at the start of the film, what does society tell them they should believe, and what does your protagonist believe by the end of the film? What ideology actually ends up proving true? A good character generally starts a story with parts of the truth, and that is what makes them feel displaced from their environment, but because they have not truly wrapped their hands around it, they remain stuck until they reconcile the contradictions in themselves.

    A good example of this might be Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's. Holly is basically the original free-spirit icon that frequents the romantic-comedy genre. She fills her life with exotic and unconventional bits of excitement, and that is what makes her so captivating to both the audience and to Paul. But all the while, she denies herself anything approaching attachment. She fears the moment she lays down roots, all that is liberated and special about her will just disappear, and this is why she pushes away a relationship with a person she feels genuine connection to.

       Holly falsely conflates the institution of partnership with the act of sacrificing your individuality. But Holly doesn't have to shed her signature flair for style or spontaneity in order to allow this guy into her world, and if she can learn the difference, she might get to experience a higher form of freedom. This conversation has a lot of overlap with the arithmetic of character arc. Ideally there is overlap between a protagonist's want and need, but a protagonist who moves no distance will wind up feeling very hollow. Let’s take a look at what Pat wants.

    In broad strokes, Pat wants to prove he is normal in the eyes of the world. The way to do this, he believes, is to reunite with his estranged wife, Nikki. When Pat lost Nikki, he lost his sense of security, and winning her back is the only way he knows how to feel normal, worthy.

If it sounds like Nikki is a trophy wife, it’s because she kind of is. Nikki exists in this film as more of a concept than an actual character, and it’s no coincidence that the film never lets us get to know Nikki. Pat himself doesn’t really see Nikki as a human being. He sees her as a prize he’ll receive if he proves himself worthy of her. Pat's family tries to redirect him from this by telling him things don't work that way in real life. But again, Pat's an optimist. His belief in the benevolence of the universe is his secret weapon. How can his support system expect him to just give that up?

        But the secret is that Pat doesn’t find his happy ending by being accepted by Nikki, or the world. He finds that with Tiffany, a person who is actually equipped to love Pat in the way he deserves. Learning to love Tiffany is a sort of token for Pat learning to love the parts of himself that society tells him are not desirable. The peculiarities that make the two of them oddballs turn them into each other’s greatest cheerleaders. Tiffany helps Pat to accept the world as it is, and Pat helps Tiffany see that this world can still have room for people like them.

    As a slight tangent, I'd clarify that Pat isn’t settling for Tiffany. She’s not a lesser prize compared to Nikki. We're much more attached to her because the time we spend time with her. We get to know her, and she gets to win us over with her brutal insight, her fearless commitment. At her most basic function, Tiffany may be there to facilitate the arc of the male protagonist, but her character has such a strong presence that she doesn't feel like a reward for the guy. And this also goes to show what a narrative can have it both ways: you can design your romantic leading lady to be the man's perfect counterpart while still allowing her full personhood.

Silver Linings Playbook pulls off Pat’s complex character arc because he realizes that he is right where it counts—that even a screw-up like him still deserves a happy ending—but there’s still growth involved because he learns to live with a more complete definition of happiness. It's a "realistic" ending in that Pat doesn’t will his ex-wife into reciprocating his feelings, but his belief in true love and goodness does reveal a happy ending--one that the world would never have given him naturally.

I want to return to that scene where Pat has a mental breakdown in front of the movie theater. When Pat’s panic starts to build and it looks like he’s about to have a very public breakdown, the only person who understands is Tiffany--the person who got him riled up in the first place.

    As soon as she recognizes that he’s about to have an attack, her empathy kicks in and she immediately jumps to his defense, speaking up for him in front of the police and helping him deescalate. Pat soon after returns the favor by chiding the officer for making a pass at her, which also shows growth from his end. This scene juxtaposes both of their struggles and reveals how, rather than driving them apart, Pat and Tiffany’s mutual challenges leave them uniquely equipped to support one another.

Pat and Tiffany get to reach their own happy ending, but like Moat says, it’s not a clean conclusion for either of them. It’s assumed that Pat and Tiffany will continue to live within the parameters of their mental illnesses, but having lived through their experiences, they’ll be better equipped to face their roadblocks. Pat learns that a happy ending is not something that comes after you are done struggling, but that the pursuit of love and fulfillment, alongside someone who understands you perfectly, is the happy ending.

The ending of the novel has Pat reflecting how, "In my arms is a woman ... who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, who knows what meds I'm on, and who allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me."

 

Excelsior

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

            Film is where we go to reacquaint ourselves with things that we know to be true, or maybe just hope are true. That’s why Pat lives life like it's a romantic epic. Goodness, that’s why I throw myself into not just watching films but studying them. As I argue in my Main Character Syndrome piece, living life like it's a movie is never really about fanning your own importance, but rather in learning to recognize those patterns of empathy that storytelling trains us so well in. And if you become a little kinder to all the other protagonists making their way in this world, that's a casualty we'll have to live with.

    Trying to explain how a well-adjusted person can possibly maintain this silver linings outlook in a world like ours, one that is at once devastating and mind-numbing, is no easy task. The fool who tries it leaves themselves vulnerable to ridicule or scorn. That's why I have such respect for media that have the tenacity to go against the grain and ask these questions anyway.

Parks and Recreation (2009)

    While I understand the need for a balanced diet, I hope that the world never discounts the power of stories that exalt the nobility of chasing one's happy ending. Because as this film demonstrates, that ending can look like a lot of things: you just have to be bold enough to pursue it, whatever your world is telling you.

It takes a special peace of mind to look past all the hurt the world has to offer and remind yourself that even heroes are allowed to have setbacks and limitations. And for the person who dares to look for that silver lining anyway, and who maybe checks to see if there are any other nuts on the same road, they might just find a happy ending that goes on for a very long time.

--The Professor