Silver Linings

Guess what, Sunday's my favourite day, again. . . (Pat Solitano in Silver Linings Playbook)

To quote Pat some more: The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday, that's guaranteed; and I can't begin to explain that or the craziness inside myself and everybody else - but he knew it the minute he met her that he could find a way by loving her to resume normality, which is attractive to people all mashed up in all ten ways. Eventually, after the mad dance has been danced and the focus, collaboration and discipline of dancing it with her have shown his true self up to him, again, Pat apologises for having taken so long to catch up. "I just got stuck", he confesses.

Reading the signs

In retrospect, Pat knows he fell in love at first sight; one does, even outside Hollywood. But one cannot get romantic until one has read the signs clearly.

These signs come in alignments; and Pat's dad (Robert de Niro), a highly superstitious bookie (so obsessed with keeping the balance he is compulsive about linking up the details of a very personal course of life to the course of the game he faciliates the betting on) advises his son to pay attention to the signs. "It's a sin if you do not reach back when life reaches out in a moment like that."

He goes on to let him know, for all it is worth (for sons seldom listen to the seasoned fathers), "it wil haunt you for the rest of your days like a curse" if you ignore the signs or deny them.

Happiness Therapy v. Self-reflective Therapy

The writing is always on the wall. With happiness therapy (a measure of our progress) we begin to read. It is why a couple needs the tension caused by attraction between eachother in order to relax into an experimental (playful) encounter, as do Pat and Tiffany, if a little too stridently at times, in their running and dancing and fiesty sparring. We can observe in these two how we actually fall in love on a mood or state of being decided long before we know its purpose. The art is to uphold it and raise to meet its frequency, and not let the madness interfere. Then one attracts what one likes, and doesn't settle for someone like themselves for a wedlock of self-reflective therapy.

Why I Rewatched the Movie

Even if a little over-directed and some of dialogue might be a little too tightly scripted, the film " Silver Linings" has a great cast and a down to earth-tone about it which is able to carry a deep truth about our human nature in tact from beginning to end through the film and into your life to linger.

It is interesting how it came to be that I watched the movie again, after having watched it the first time, six years ago. I had posted on grenades under the bed - and was wondering how to get rid of an undetonated but live one in case of an Issa Valley (vid. a former post ) emergency. One prompt soon lead to another till I found a clip of the scene in this particular movie, where "Farewell to Arms" got thrown through the window at 3 in the morning (for having a miserable ending). In a line of signs waiting to beat the odds, I let that book fallen on my foot, send me to the Library for a video copy of the film.

I followed the signs as I always do and saw once more, or maybe better than before, why we need to trail physical clues, like snuffling animals; why we need to adopt the right poses like the antennae of scanning insects; why we need to connect on a physical basis: precisely to meet our spiritual needs. For love, actually, desires most to be born and cradled inbetween two lovers, who are not of the flesh, but in it. How else to carry on living if not happy with our bodies but also keen to bridge the myriad of microscopic and surface differences, to become whole, one, all, noone, everyone, the world, with our loving intent?

Spoiler alert

And thus the film ends without any drivel or mad passion; the madness is done. It is just life made possible again. The dad is still besotted with betting, the mother still lives to please her men, the house is full of play and serious living, but she sits on his lap and in his armchair they have a world of their own making. Co-creators in the bud.