Watched again. Thought I'd put a review in here and then see what the thread said about it.
Love in the 21st Century is something I'm viewing with dad-eyes, since I've been off that field of play since the 80s. My experience of the state of play in this era is widespread. My son has been focussed on getting on, through his degree and masters and first job and move to London. Now he is earning very good money and he is in a fairly lively social environment. So many people, but a city that bites back when you try to take a nibble out of it. He seems to eat out more than eats in, so he is tremendously active, and I love to think of him in that place, gulping down life. I can't tell you much about his private life because that's what it is, private. We hear what he wants to tell us, which is a lot, but when it comes to friends and relationships, its a quieter area of discussion. One thing is he seems to have about four short holidays lined up and they are all stag weekends and weddings. So his friends are starting to pair off. So it will be a big issue for him this year. But good luck to how he wants to deal with it. My elder daughter seems so settled, she seems set for life. Same boyfriend for what seems like ten years. Veeerrrrry good jobs (he- engineer at Jaguar (Cool!) her- architect) and they cycled round Denmark this year and Holland the year before. Healthy relationship all round. My youngest threw herself into a relationship to the extent they already live together. I have this aching regret that her music has taken a back seat to love, but she won't have any idea of that, because that's none of my business. We have a close relationship and I wouldn't say anything overbearing like that to her. They are young and he has a good carpenter's job and they live with his parents. So we keep a watchful eye.
So I think we have a wide spread of the relationships field there. Work can be the all-encumbering, sucking hole that your time and effort gets drained down. Every generation has to deal with that balance and as the genders even out more and more, any old assumption of how we move forward to a work-life balance gets more and more old fashioned. Hence how one steps back away or forward into work to make space for lurve
and family is fascinating, interesting but bloody scary. And it can end up looking like a bowl of spaghetti of unplanning and accidents from the other end of the process......the waiting to become grandparents side. In this film, the couple are thrown into states of mental dis-ease by relationship trauma. It's a love story that starts from a point where the chance that this pair can succeed seems unlikely when they have the whole game stacked against them. From the first moment, and we hear Cooper say that it was love at first sight, later, they look perfect for each other a real natural pair. Cooper and Lawrence have something together. Lawrence tends to blow Cooper off the screen every moment, so she is out of his league as an actor but on screen the chemistry is apparent. The mechanisms of their states of mind deny them much chance.
If I wanted to dramatically over step my bounds and advise my kids how to find love in a harsh climate, I would look to the David O Russell playbook for the answer.
The thing about the internet is that you get into a condition where you are ignoring most of what comes to you. You don't answer the phone unless you recognise the number, you trash emails without reading them. When I looked for a job a while back the silence was deafening. Agencies get job applications in such easy, large numbers that they don't or won't even answer them anymore. I waited, I had one job interview and I got that job. It's become a process of filters and sorting and your name better come out in the top half dozen. My age, my experience, my current status all matched up to one particulate job over a period of time that I can't even tell you because it's excruciating. I knew if I waited something would fall just right. That's a horrible world to live in, isn't it. The cold edge of the chip and the harsh pixellated light, when applied to your life. If I had to computer date I think that "made for each other" claim would drive me batty. Made for me!!? I'd probably run away, even if someone could match that very strange long list of interests and opinions I have. The bizarre world of dating online feels not a lot like the fuzzy logical world of intimacy and affection.
DOR has decided that the way to ease your way into a relationship is.....should I be asking for payment for this idea?.........dancing.
https://youtu.be/wIuEBbAiz-Yhttps://youtu.be/buCLP610jegJoy falls in love dancing on stage.
So go dancing. That idea of a dance montage set to Bob Dylan in mordant form is a gem. I love Russell's feel for music in all of these films. How Christian Bale and Amy Adams instantly connect over Duke Ellington and how it is one particular tune that supplies that right intensity and feel in a scene. How Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times" delivers the emotion as a background to a bipolar episode. If there was a reel of David O Russell musical numbers edited together, it would be my ideal movie.
Oh yeah, what do I think of
Silver Linings Playbook? Like I said Lawrence blows Cooper off the screen like a strong gust of wind. When she ambushes him as he runs through the streets, he looks genuinely disconcerted by her, and she really attacks those scenes and scares me as well. Both SLP and
Joy are centred on family and interfering overbearing families at that. Since
Joy focusses on Jennifer Lawrence and since she is a sublime actor, I like
Joy much more. Cooper occupies a subordinate role and it works better that way around.
American Hustle has Bale and Adams, yet each time Lawrence appears it turns into her film and she projects chaos all over the screen. But Bale and Adams are well matched to keep the movie at a crescendo (or climax) for all of its running length and it is extraordinary. SLP feels to me like the first time Russell let go and took away the safety net. The storyline of out of control mental illness probably aided his progression as a director, but he also found an actress who could match his vision.
If Jennifer Lawrence deserved an Oscar for SLP, then she deserves one for
Joy. Just by sheer quantity her screen time is much greater in
Joy. Like I say Adams is in her weightclass and so is Cate Blanchett. If Kate Winslet stopped mugging around she might get a role to match them (I still like the idea of that Aussie dressmaker story, so Ill see that). Lawrence has a full deck. Franchises, directors who put her in every film. She looks brilliant to work with, unless people who won't shut up aren't to your taste.
Also I think de Niro is great in this film and he repeats the performance in
Joy. I have no trouble ignoring the crap he appears in. He still has it but he saves it for DOR movies.
Dance , sucka!
