Crazymaking

What they never tell you in therapy school* is that you can be crazy without being crazy. Case in point: Bradley Cooper in the Silver Linings Playbook.

Yes, DeSean Jackson is in the house.

In the last two weeks I decided that the start of football season was an apt time to review a movie about the sport. As you might have guessed from the above image, Silver Linings is that movie.

But this is not a film just about football. No--it's about obsession, about wanting something so badly it blinds you to what is right in front of your eyes.

Released in 2012 just in time for Oscar season, the film features Cooper as Pat Solatano, a man in a mental hospital for assaulting his wife's lover. He suffers from bipolar disorder and a really, really bad  motto: Excelsior, meaning ... what does it mean?

Tiffany Maxwell, a young widow recently fired from her job for sleeping with the whole office, is the woman he meets after being released.

Jennifer Lawrence.

It's difficult to tell who is more crazy. I mean, when they meet at a diner he orders Raisin Bran and she orders tea.

For the record: Raisin Bran, every time.

Pat, still in love with his ex-wife, resists this premise. He thinks that she is the crazier one, until he's forced to acknowledge that in the bundle of insanity that is Pat and Pat's family and Pat's life, Tiffany Maxwell may be the only thing about it that makes sense.

Tiffany has her own life and her own persona and yet she's still willing to reach out and ask for what she wants, in addition to indulging the insanity that is football fandom. Listen to this video and tell me that this is not a girl who has thought through her argument:

That said, having seen it several times what keeps me coming back to Silver Linings is not actually the football or the crazy '80s style dance routines. No. What I like about this film is its acknowledgement of the obvious: that we are all crazy. We are crazy in love, we are crazy in fandom, and we are just plain crazy.

And that's okay.

EXCELSIOR.