Movie Analysis : ' Silver Linings Playbook '

In the opening scene of The Silver Linings Playbook (2012) the main character, Pat, was just being released from a court-ordered stay at a psychiatric hospital. After finding his wife cheating on him, with their wedding song playing in the background, Pat reacted by aggressively assaulting the other man. Unfortunately, because of this incident, Pat lost his job, his wife obtained a restraining order against him, and he was about to be sent to jail. However, rather going to jail, he took a plea bargain that sentenced him to eight months in a psychiatric hospital.

I selected Gladding’s model (2008) to evaluate 12 Angry Men with contemplation and thought after viewing the film and reviewing the reading selections. Gladding’s model goes through the five stages of forming/orientation, transition storming/norming, performing/working, and mourning/termination. After careful consideration of the various models presented in the text, I found that Gladding’s model provided the appropriate stages that were evidenced in the video. I also admire and respect Gladding’s work, so it was a great choice to analyze further. The movie 12 Angry Men depicts a superb model of a group who face challenges and responsibilities, while trying to reach a goal. Throughout the film you are able to see the characters working together, forming relationships, emerging leaders, collaboration, cohesion, and respect among the men. Overall, it reveals how groups work and what can take place in a group setting. Crespi (2008) states, “Group counseling initiatives are one important service that can help children” (p.273). As an aspiring school counselor it is imperative that effective group counseling skills are learned so they can be utilized to best help students.

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

Food and Drug Association agents on one side, desperately sick people on the other. Anyone would normally think these two groups would be on the same page but this was the scene for many buyers’ clubs around the nation in the late 80’s and early 90’s as the HIV/AIDS crisis took ahold of America and what inspired the movie Dallas Buyers Club. The movie is based on the story of AIDS patient Ron Woodroof, who was described as “handsome, in a Texas dumb hick white trash kinda way” by his transgender sidekick, Rayon, and his pursuit to live despite the fact that the only drug approved by the FDA to fight AIDS is actually killing patients. The growth of buyers’ clubs proves that in a time where AIDS victims

The film I chose to analyze is Silver Linings Playbook because I was interested in the story when I read the synopsis of the movie. I thought that this would be a simple movie where the main characters would help each other because they had something in common. Reading the synopsis, I also thought that Pat would be back together with his wife, but at the end he found another love. In the next paragraphs I will show my knowledge on what I have learned this semester. On my analysis of Silver Linings, I will give examples that has the concept of language, nonverbal communication, listening, emotions, conflict, and close relationships.

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.

The movie Silver Lining playbook is an award winning movie that exposes some social disorders that the community as a whole as engaged in for years. “A word-of-mouth hit in 2012, David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook has been popularly discussed as successfully targeting an adult audience under-served in contemporary Hollywood, as “authentically” reflecting the parenting challenges of its star and director, and as portraying a “modern” romance about a sympathetic, deeply damaged protagonist couple” (Nadel P1.).

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a relatively new form of therapy derived from a combination of cognitive and behaviour interventions, which are constructed on empirical evaluation of communication and cognitions (Hayes, 2004).

When watching The Hateful Eight it’s clear that Quentin Tarantino was inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing. There are quite a few subtle nods to the classic horror film as well as some not so subtle similarities. One could watch one right after the other and immediately see the similarities between the two films. While most people would not consider The Hateful Eight a horror film it takes the greatest horror aspects of The Thing and uses them to its advantage. Quentin Tarantino took quite a few ideas from John Carpenter’s The Thing and modified them so they fit seamlessly in to his western film, including actors, characters, and even some music that was originally written for Carpenter’s film but was never used.

Process groups are useful in teaching clients healthy ways of communicating, so they can develop effective and satisfying relationships with other individuals. These types of process groups are called psychodynamic groups. Psychodynamic groups consist of clients with a wide range of issues. They help clients learn healthy coping skills, and teach them to become self-aware of their dysfunctional behaviors. This allows clients to be happier and live within society more successfully (Fortinash & Holoday Worrett, 2008; Montgomery, 2002).

The movie, The Breakfast Club, is a movie about five students who get Saturday school and become friends as a result of it. The characters were: Allison, the quiet girl who would sit in the back and refuse to talk; John, the troublemaker who always talked back to the teachers; Claire, the popular girl who always got what she wanted; Brian, the nerdy student who only cared about having good grades; Andrew, the wrestler who was only focused impressing his father. While watching the movie, I mainly related to Brian. He is pressured to have good grades by his parents and is labeled as the nerd because of it. I am also pressured to have good grades; however, I am labeled as the smart kid in many different classes, but I’m not classified as a nerd.

I have watched a considerable number of movies this semester so it was hard to choose which one to analyze. It came down to “Remember the Titans” or “Good Will Hunting”. However, the movie that I will be analyzing is “Good Will Hunting”. The reason I chose this movie is that it can be analyzed in many different ways. I will be analyzing different scenes of the movie and analyze them from different angles. I will be analyzing about the symbolism that is happening in the movie. I will be analyzing many different things about the movie. The first thing I will analyze in this movie is the symbolism of things, objects, colors, and

Researchers such as Hayes and Strosahl (2005) defines acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) as an empirically based intervention technique from the cognitive behavior model of psychotherapy that employs mindfulness and acceptance methods mixed in various ways. Grounded within the practical concept of functional contextualism and based on the comprehensive idea of language and cognition, ACT is different from the normal or traditional cognitive behavioral therapy. The differences are manifested in the paradigm of instead of teaching people to control their emotions, ACT teaches them to acknowledge, accept and embrace the emotions and or feelings (Hayes, Louma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). Primarily, western traditions

The third wave of behavioral therapy includes acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. These types of therapies are designed to help people accept difficult life experiences and to persuade individuals to act on their core values. An evolution of cognitive-behavioral therapy, ACT, MBCT, and DBT not only include the thought process within the behavioral network, but mindfulness and acceptance as well. Instead of teaching people to control their thoughts and feelings in the case of CBT, ACT & DBT draws from far eastern philosophies of noticing and accepting the things in life that you cannot change.

The 2012 movie “Silver Linings Playbook” is a drama-romantic comedy written and directed by David O. Russell and among others, stars Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert De Niro. The film received eight academy award nominations, was nominated in all four Oscar categories, and does a fairly accurate job of portraying an individual with a bipolar disorder, who was just released into the care of his parents, and his segue back into his family and social life after eight months of clinical treatment in a mental health facility.