Film Analysis : The Silver Linings Playbook

In the movie Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper plays the main character Pat Solitano Jr. The movie starts off with Pat being released from a psychiatric facility. Pat’s time spent in the psychiatric facility was a plea bargain that his lawyer advised him to make. The court only mandated eight months of inpatient time, and against the will of the doctors in the facility, his mother is discharging him because she thinks that eight months is sufficient time for Pat to become well. On the drive home Pat wants to stop at the library so he can pick up a copy of all the books that his ex-wife Nikki has on her high school teaching syllabus, so that he can connect with her and get his job back. When they get back to his parent’s house it

Throughout life, an individual undergoes many changes that can take a toll on him or her, eventually resulting in mental illnesses. It mostly depends on how the individual will face the challenges that are thrown at them. The award winning novel, Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick approaches many mental illnesses during the book such as depression, OCD, but primarily an illness called bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, a bipolar disorder is a mental illness marked by alternating periods of elation and depression, experiencing extreme mood swings that include emotional highs (Mayo Clinic Staff par. 1). During the course of the book, this disorder is vividly shown in the main character,

The film Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper, is set in Philadelphia as he plays the main character Patrick “Pat” Solitano Jr., a diagnosed bipolar who was released from a mental institution and later moves back to his parents. According to the Mayo Clinic website, there are two types of bipolar disorders: Bipolar I and Bipolar II. Bipolar I is about experiencing manic episodes, and this can cause a significant impairment in the person’s life such as difficulty at work, social activities, or relationships. This could also cause to trigger a break from reality. Bipolar II deals with depressive episodes, but have never experienced manic episodes and this can cause distress or difficulty in areas of the person’s life such as decreased need for sleep, racing thoughts, or distractibility (mayoclinic.org). Between the two types of bipolar disorders, Pat Solitano expresses the symptoms of Bipolar disorder I. Therefore, he meets the criteria for this mental illness. Pat shows manic episodes throughout the film. During his therapy, he takes Dr. Patel further back to where it all started before the major incident took place that led to his confinement in the mental institution. Patrick calls the police because he thought that his wife Nikki and the history teacher were plotting against him by embezzling money from the school. However, it turns out that these are just his delusions which infer that this is completely false. There were several visible symptoms that were

It encompasses many genres such as comedy, drama, and romance. The portrayal of bipolar disorder helped the movie along with the stigma surrounding this disorder. It showed how serious manic episodes can be, but it also showed how difficult it is to deal with the consequences that manic episodes produce. The portrayal of the therapist did not help this movie, however, because it made it seem as if those with bipolar disorder can’t be helped by a therapist, but through a relationship, can overcome the disorder. There are some stereotypes of bipolar disorder that are supported by this film and there are some that are not. The stereotype that bipolar disorder is the equivalent of mood swings is not supported in this movie. “Silver Linings Playbook” accurately depicts the different episodes and shows the audience how serious they really are. It also shows how someone with bipolar disorder struggles with these episodes because they don’t have the intention of hurting other, however that tends to be a result of the episodes. One stereotype of many disorders is that those with disorders just need a good relationship to “heal” them. This is supported through this movie when Pat finds dance therapy and a relationship with Tiffany to be beneficial in many ways including overcoming his

In the movie Silver Linings Playbook, we follow Pat Solitano Jr., a man recently released from a mental institution (Cohen et al., 2012). He is a Caucasian male, likely in his early to mid-thirties and of Italian descent. He was a high school history teacher, living with his wife, Nikki, an English teacher. Upon finding his wife in the shower with another man, he nearly beats the man to death leading him to be sent to a psychiatric facility for eight months with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. In this essay I will support the diagnosis of a Bipolar I disorder. A diagnosis of Bipolar I disorder, has specific criteria in the DSM-V that have to be met. I will be listing the criteria and through examples of Pat’s actions, thoughts and behaviours, he meets the criteria.

Bipolar disorder, a mental illness that brings severe highs and lows in mood and changes in behavior, changes a person’s perspective. This is evident in Carrie Fisher’s memoir, Wishful Drinking, which accounts Fisher’s time spent with bipolar disorder and how the disorder has affected her life. Sharing these experiences and the negative stigma around mental health has altered her perspective in a unique way. These negative experiences led to poor self-reflection, causing Fisher to be ashamed of herself. Also, her bipolar disorder made her feel as though everyone was against her, not fighting for her and her success, but more waiting for her to fail. Even the people closest to her seemed to be critical of her and would hunt for any excuse to

Everyone has quirks that make him or her an individual. We filter through life, attempting to seamlessly weave our oddities into a “normal” person. As difficult as trying to fit circles into squares, the silver lining in these valiant attempts is that the “normal” person doesn’t exist. That is what writer-director David O. Russell understood when making The Silver Linings Playbook, The film is a fantastic study in how our individual quirks, though varying in degree, have the ability to render all of us completely insane.

During the film Silver Linings Playbook many of the characters had extensive anger issues or could not maintain their anger well in their daily lives (Russell, 2012). Pat had anger issues, Pat’s dad also had anger problems, Pat’s friend Ronnie has anger problems and Tiffany is working on controlling all of her emotions not just anger. These four characters are the main reason it seemed practical for a self management group. Many of them are balancing lots of stress and dealing with it through anger or other ill-advised avenues. This group would be mostly a support group, but also a therapy group so clients could learn how to deal with their current problems and add some more balance into their lives. It would be a support group because the goals are obviously to talk about existing problems while using current positive coping skills (Toseland & Rivas, 2012). However, it would also be a therapy group because the goal is to take away coping skills that have only caused more problems and replace them with better ones.

The Silver Linings Playbook adequately portrays accurate elements of bipolar disorder while also portraying negative perceptions of the disorder. The film manages to show multiple examples of manic episode along with compelling characters and good acting to better the understanding on the disorder. According to the DSM-5 for an individual to be diagnosed with bipolar I disorder they must have manic episodes and at least one depressive episode. Throughout the film, it centered its focus on manic symptoms of bipolar I disorder and neglected to show depressive episodes. One might think that they do so for entertainment purposes but the DSM-IV also states that females with bipolar I disorder are more likely to express symptoms of depression than

A shift in mood can be a detrimental occurrence for someone. Sometimes they don’t even understand why or how to control it. Mood swings, shifting from a manic state to a depressive state, is considered to be a sign of Bipolar Disorder 1. Bipolar disorder 1 is the tendency of manic episodes to alternate with major depressive episodes in an unending roller coaster ride from peaks of elation to the depths of despair (Barlow; Durand, 2015). It affects people 's moods, energy and ability to think clearly, negatively hindering that persons relationship with their peers, ability to work, get an education, and function normally with a balanced mood ("Bipolar Disorder",n.d). Bradley Cooper plays a middle-aged man, Patrick Solitano, who suffers from Bipolar Disorder in the movieSilver Linings Playbook. Pat went through many obstacles after a trigger set him off into a rage that landed him at a mental institution for eight months. He spent his life thinking that he just has a short fuse like his father, but later into his adulthood he was diagnosed as an undiagnosed Bipolar until later events recognized his disorder as Bipolar Disorder 1. Pat’s life events that occur throughout the movie highlight how severe and dramatizing the disorder can be when unrecognized. In the film, Pats ending may have been a happy one, but for most Bipolar Disorder patients, it is a stressful long-term illness that is extremely difficult to correct.

The Road to Rock Bottom is one of the most touching movies that I have watched this year. The movie tell the story the difficulties that sharecroppers, farmers, and farm workers before especially during the beginning of The Great Depression. I noted that this movie largely dwells on the distressing environmental factors such as drought and how they affected sharecroppers, migrant laborers, and farmers. I also noted that during this time, farmers greatly suffered as a result of falling farm prices that eventually led to foreclosures, indebtedness, homelessness, starvation, hardship, and diminishing returns. This movie also covers the shocking story of Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, including how he interacted with many

Silver Linings Playbook is a movie whose theme revolves around mental health. The disorder of focus in the film is bipolar disorder, which is experienced by the protagonist Pat. The movie contains an accurate depiction of the disorder in some regards. The origins of Pat’s disorder are congruent with the origins of bipolar as explained by Barlow and Durand in Abnormal Psychology though the full extent of the origins are not explored in the movie. Some of the symptoms that Pat experiences are again consistent with the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-IV-TR and some are taken to an extreme and for that reason the film should not be treated as educational.

The work chosen was “Silver Linings Playbook” by David O’Russell and Matthew Quick. The reason this why I chose this work was because a character in the movie has the same condition I have, which is Bipolar disorder. The movie portrayed a young man, Pat, coping with his challenges of this mental disorder.

Silver Linings Playbook’s main character appears to be your average man. He comes off as one who may have a steady job that provides him with a reasonable salary, a wife, and possibly a growing family. However, this is only the opinion of someone who has not seen the struggles he deals with daily. After researching through resources such as The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and other scholarly journals, it is evident that Pat Solitano’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder stands true throughout the film. The main symptoms of bipolar disorder listed in the DSM-5 are high self esteem, decreased need for sleep, very talkative, racing thoughts, distractibility, increase in goals, and a continuous involvement in activities that could result in painful consequences. Through an evaluation of Pat in this movie, it will be clear to the reader that his diagnosis is accurate.

In the documentary, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, English comedic-actor Stephen Fry interviews fellow celebrities, psychologist and everyday people about their lives impact by Manic Depressive, also known as Bipolar II Disorder. The documentary shares the experiences of people who have struggle with the understanding of self and their psychological issues as they have become more aware of their mental status; this correlates with Ruder and Inder’s 2008 research which focused on the development of sense of self of people diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. This paper will reflect on the use of childhood diagnosis, development of self as well as the importance of building awareness. In the beginning of the film, Stephen Fry explains his last suicidal attempt, which he classifies as a cry for help, lead him to be diagnosis with Bipolar