He obviously is mentally unstable, a lot neurotic, and lacks any type of tact....but I don't see him as bipolar(going through long manic/depressive phases). Unless throughout the whole movie he's manic and the whole "silver linings" thing is a part of that. I read his diagnosis was not specified in the book...perhaps they just threw it into the movie to make it more comprehensible.
Thoughts?
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It's in the book. I think.
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It's not "Sci-Fi", it's SF!
"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker
Having had a bi-polar relative who has been hospitalized on a pysch hold for his disease, it is a great over-simplification of the disease. It certainly isn't something that can be cured with a dance routine and the love of a good-hearted woman in a co-dependent relationship. That relationship and that family is toxic is so many ways despite the happy ending.
That being said it was a nice romantic story to get lost in...as long as you remember it is a simplified and romanticized version of what reality is actually like.
Yeah, that was one of the parts of the movie that bugged me.
The therapist telling Pat to help Tiffany. I don't think it was a realistic thing for a therapist to say.
A lot of time, mentally ill people need to be selfish and take care of themselves- especially when just coming out of hospitalization.
Some mentally ill people can and do end up together, but a lot of time it does become super volatile, unhealthy, obsessive, etc.
They would need to do a lot of work on themselves and with each other for it to work, I imagine.
Little girls shouldn't look for four leaf clovers!
Bradly Cooper is a superb mediocre actor, and he fits this movie perfectly - a stupid farce about nothing. They make dozens of it every year, Americans just can't have enough fairy tales. Even Lawrence's performance was dull.
And BTW - no practitioner of psychology or psychiatry has never cured anything in the entire history of those disciplines. So yes, manic depression can't be cured by a dance routine or by a kiss from a pretty girl.
You have to remember that the movie only shows them for small portions of each week. Most of the scenes revolve around each Sunday when football games occur.
The depression parts were left out for good reason since they are going to be hard to make into a comedy scenes. Since the movie takes place over a few months period, it would be expected that the medicine would start to help him some during the later period.
You also find out in the movie that he in Bipolar NOS or Undiagnosed Bipolar. There are different levels of severity when it comes to Bipolar. He definitely presents as someone with Bipolar 1 disorder, with lots of other comorbid conditions.
shareBipolar is pretty broad, there's different types.
Just like OCD. In the movies, it's almost always checkers or washers, filing stuff in order, etc...It's harder to portrary pure OCD on film since so much of it deals with disturbing thoughts in the head and the ritual of "erasing" the bad thoughts in your head, rather than performing a task (locks, washing, touching something a certain amount of times, etc)
I know a couple of people with OCD. One of them is the stereotypical washer and sorter, the other walks around on the street in an odd way that conforms to his imagine idea of the pavement...
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It's not "Sci-Fi", it's SF!
"Calvinism is a very liberal religious ethos." - Truekiwijoker
I'm not sure if he's exactly 'cured' at the end- obviously he's a lot happier so he's behaving differently (and also the meds). Mental illness can change, get better, worse etc
shareIt seems that Pat, Jr. was indeed cured--according to Thomas Szasz, who described mental illness, not as a clinical condition, but as "problems in living". See, e.g., http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/terrace/w1001/readings/szasz.pdf
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If you'll notice, that article was written in 1960. His theory has long been discredited. We don't know everything about mental illness, but we do know that the neurons connected to cognition and emotion are not working correctly.
shareDon't take the disorders shown in this movie seriously... They are far from accurate. I suffer from a severe anxiety disorder and can tell you it's not represented well at all in this movie. Despite that I still love it!
shareFor me it is a fairly accurate portrayal of a character with bipolar. Remember he is just out of hospital after eight months. He will have been in a relatively stable condition.
As for the competition being seen as some sort of cure for Pat, I don't see it. I see no indication towards the end of the film that suggests that Pat's general mental state has changed. What I see are his mental fluctuations continuing as before. The difference is that now there is some love and happiness in his life. He will still flip out and he will still have his moments.
Living with a life long mental condition means you will have your good times as well as your dark. What this film portrays is the often overlooked truth that the people in our community suffering from severe mental illness are not just confined to a bed, they are your coworker, your barista, your friend down the pub, or your mates at a ball game.
"Only a man who knew what it was to discern a gleam of hope in a hopeless situation . . . could have given emotional reality to the words of defiance which rallied and sustained us in the menacing summer of 1940"
- Winston Churchill, bipolar
I can't argue with anything you wrote there, you summed it up quite nicely and put an edge on the movie I hadn't seen before.
I've known a few bipolar people before, and when they hit their downs they can become irrational and start thinking in this weird, delirious way. I guess he was in a more stable frame of mind than when he was undiagnosed and running around rampant.
Now that I come to think of it, there is something this movie is very accurate in - the two finding each other and falling in love. In reality it seems to me that people who deal with psychological problems tend to find one another. It's almost like an attracting force in the universe.. we seem to all gravitate towards one another. I have only ever been in relationships with people who have had rough upbringings and mental demons.. just like me.
shareEmpathy is a very strong aphrodisiac!
shareFor me it is a fairly accurate portrayal of a character with bipolar. Remember he is just out of hospital after eight months. He will have been in a relatively stable condition.
Could not disagree more. Risk of suicide is highest in the weeks after a hospital discharge. He was supposedly hospitalized for 8 MONTHS (long time) and was discharged against medical advice, not to mention the fact that lots of people kick meds/therapy upon discharge and spiral downwards immediately.
His behavior, diagnosis, medication, and therapy are very accurate for someone with bipolar disorder. A person with GAD or an anxiety disorder is not in a position to judge.
shareNah man, I was saying that the character Danny did not display classic symptoms of having an anxiety disorder. Just doing something like breaking out of the hospital would have probably made him nervous as hell and he wouldn't have been that upbeat.
shareYou obviously don't know much about mental illness. Not everyone has the same side effects and handles it the same way. He wouldn't be that upbeat? I know plenty of people with anxiety disorders that can be upbeat relatively often. You're running on assumptions more than anything else.
shareI'm talking out of *beep* first hand experience, I have such a bad anxiety disorder and somatic symptom disorder I tried to kill myself. I'm on clonazepam and stared down at the pavement on the roof of a building last week. I have experienced 10/10 level of anxiety. If you had an anxiety disorder to the point of becoming hospitalized you would not be able to function like a normal human being.
This is a fun movie, but displays the mental illnesses as rather quirks than what they really are. I know a guy with bi-polar and he woke me up one time crying into the phone at 4 in the morning standing on the edge of a bridge.
Don't you dare lecture me on mental illness, I have lived it my entire life since the moment I was born.
You would have to have lived with a person who is bi-polar, as I did with my brother for 40 years, to understand the illness and the behaviors that are common to it.
Pat had always had the tendencies, which he alludes to in the doctors's office, but they had been repressed......and like my brother, it was triggered by a devastating event in their life.
For Pat, it was his wife's infidelity, and for my brother, it was what happened to him in the Army.
Bi -polar used to be referred to as Manic Depression, where a person would go through manic phases, which is what Pat was supposed to be going through in the move, with intermittent periods of depression.
I think they got their facts a little crossed however, because when pat is telling the doctor about odd behavior before he was diagnosed...... thinking his wife and the other teacher were plotting against him, he refers to it as a "delusion" when what they were talking about was paranoia....which is a big part of suffering from Bi Polar disorder.
My brother didn't start having delusions until his Schizophrenia, which he only had tendencies of when he was younger, manifested when he reached his 60's.
I'm a little ambivalent towards Cooper's performance, because....although it was entertaining, I felt he was all over the place with his behavior, and that he never really captured true bi polar characteristics.
For me anyway, his performance didn't reach any higher than just another hollywood caricature of a mentally ill person.
he refers to it as a "delusion" when what they were talking about was paranoia
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Paranoia IS a delusion, at least at the higher levels. One of many types of delusions, and probably the most common one.
as someone with diagnosed bi-polar I can tell you that pats portrayal of the disorder is pretty well spot-on, the very common misconception of bi-polar is that you have to be "going through long manic/depressive phases" it doesn't work like that for the most of the time. I think great examples in this film are when he can't find his wedding video, and when he finishes reading the book.
share