Feeling quite accomplished today as I finally finished reading The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick which has taken me just under two weeks to read. Pretty good for me as I tend to take quite a while! But not only did I finish the book, I even went and saw the film which only came out on Thursday! It sounds so funny to feel so accomplished over such things but I do! I really do!
It was kind of funny really. I was at work yesterday contemplating my evening ahead and how I'd like to see the film and had about 40 pages of the book left. So I got onto my friend hoping she too would be keen. We arranged our date and I literally read the final pages while I waited to meet her! I wouldn't recommend doing that though because with the book so extremely fresh in your head it is a little harder to take the drastic changes they make to the story in the film. Having said that the film was fantastic. I just love Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper and Jackie Weaver was also brilliant and Robert De Niro is always fantastic.
If you haven't already read about it without giving much away The Silver Linings Playbook is about a Pat Peoples, a recovering mentally ill sports teacher who is trying to be a better person so he can get back with his wife Nikki and end 'apart time'. Meanwhile similarly 'crazy' Tiffany comes into his life with her own baggage but oddly trying to help Pat reach Nikki.
It's kind of funny, as I read the book I imagined some of the scenes being played out because you already knew the cast, in your head you watched your own film as you read the book. My film was quite different to the actual film. I'm going to be hanging out for it to come on DVD so I can watch it again and again to process it better. Right from the start it just goes a bit differently. But I can see why it was altered the way it was. I think one of the big differences to me was in my head it was all so much more serious in the book but the film brings out a lot of comedy (it is classified a rom-com) in it which is fantastic. Many moments where the cinema just burst out laughing. I love that! It's quite a confronting read and watch for some with the issues of mental health being addressed and what it's like living with these issues. We all know someone or have first hand experience of mild or more serious cases of these so it hits home hard on some. So it was good to be lightened up. It was really good. Its funny for the book to be a film because throughout the book Pat, the main man, constantly talks about his life being a movie. I really loved it. The more I think about it the more I like the book and the film for different reasons. Overall very content with both. Props to the screenwriters and director and all involved really. I think it's just brilliant.
Bottom line I give it a 9.99 out of 10. Go read the book. Go see the film. I honestly recommend it to everyone and anyone. Do it in whichever order you prefer because they are quite different. Either way I hope you find it as uplifting as I did.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
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