The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday. That's guaranteed. I can't begin to explain that. Or the craziness inside myself and everyone else.
If Silver Linings Playbook is on TV, I cannot turn if off. It's been like that since I first saw it in the cinema some years ago, in a early screening before its premiere.
This movie get me every time, doesn't matter how many I've seen it. It's gripping in its way to talk about a lot of sadness and craziness. I've heard many people saying how Matthew Quick's book is better than the movie, how the main character's mental condition is taken more seriously in the book. I disagree, sorry. Despite being almost two different stories - the facts are actually very different in each one -, the movie addresses the mental disease in a better way by being funny and moving, creating more layers to the story.
I felt the same with The Perks of Being a Walflower. The book is amazing, but the movie is something else in its incredible delicacy - and Stephen Chbosky wrote both the novel and the screenplay. He told his story in two different ways, because the movie talks about a difficult subject in a honest and poetic way, whilst the book presents a heavier hand.
Looks like talking about something in a lighter manner could take a bit of the intensity and seriousness of the story. I didn't feel like that in either movies. It was the opposite, actually. And to prove my point, I can say that I remember every bit of both films and nothing much about the books.
There's something in David O. Russel movie that always calls my attention: how the so called normal people seem to be crazier that the disturbed characters. Pat's best friend is an example. He is so damaged, his life is messed up, he is so locked up in the insane normalcy of marriage, work and fatherhood that I don't know how he is not in a mental institute.
Today, I could not turn the TV off at any moment of this incredible movie, so I watched all of it again. And I'll probably do the same in a near future.
This scene makes me cry every time...
and the montage chapter is my favorite part in the book.
Silver Linings Playbook. Directed and written by David O.
Russel, from the novel by Matthew Quick. With: Jennifer
Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jacki Weaver. US, 2012,
122 min., Datasat/Dolby Digital, Color (Cable TV).
After Silver Linings, I decided to install a sort of a mini couch potato routine and watch the next movie. Bright Days Ahead (Les Beaux Jours), a 2013 french production with the amazing Fanny Ardant, that I haven't seen for a while.
I remember first seeing Ardant in a François Truffaut's (that I love for life) movie, La Femme D'á Côté. It begins almost as a comedy, evolving to a tragedy. It was gripping, scary and beautiful. It had such a impact on me that I can remember my seat in the cinema and my surroundings during the screening.
Very different from Bright Days Ahead. This one is so refreshing that was a true delight, until the final scenes, when I guess the writer had to close the story of a 60 old woman that has an affair with an younger guy - a dog of a guy, but a cute and honest one. Everything was going so well, I was actually thinking how this movie was lucky to be french and not from the US, when the screenwriter mind got a little confused. And a redeeming lesson had to result from an affair that should be just that, and it wouldn't be less for not bringing redemption for both characters.
My own conclusion during the final credits (after the silly last scene): This world is getting too complicated for me, even in the movies.
| Bright Days Ahead (Les Beaux Jours). Directed and written by Marion Vernoux from the novel by Fanny Chesnel. With: Funny Ardant, Laurent Lafitte, Patrick Cheasnais. France, 2013, 94 min., Color (Cable TV). |
PS: Poldark, season 1, episodes 2 and 3.
PPS: Funny fact: after seeing Silver Linings Playbook, I was a bit adicted to Raisin Bran for sometime :)
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