DiD Review

Mental illness is a very real problem in society today. Diagnosis of the problems people have is on the rise, although many question the validity of some of the more recent claims psychologists make about the human condition. One of the biggest controversies is over DiD (Dissociative Identity Disorder) or Multiple Personality Disorder. While there are some documented cases, the vast majority have been found to be false claims. Something that criminals sometimes use to try and get out of responsibility for the crimes they commit. If they were not in control, they can not be held responsible.

Which is why it is so controversial. It is extremely hard to prove as existing and only happens in rare cases. And that makes it an interesting case for filmmakers to use. Interesting but like the disorder itself, hard to truly pull off. More often then not filmmakers use a green screen to make it work. The ability to use green screen and use a single person for multiple personalities is an effective technique when the story calls for a split in a character's moral code. You just have to give the audience something to distinguish between the two sides of the character's conflict.

More recently there have been a number of shows which try to use that technique to talk about DiD and it can be very effective when used properly. Unfortunately, I don't think that DiD really uses it properly. The motivations of the differing personalities is somewhat unclear. One is angry at their mother, one does not speak and the other is trying to honor their mother's memory. But the question is why?

That is never full explored in this film. Something happened to them, that much is obvious and they are conflicted about how to deal with it. But why? The fact that they are able to use green screen towards the end of this film suggests that they had the ability to do something more difficult and knew enough to make it work but they did not.

More dialogue between the differing personalities would have make it work much better in my opinion. The description explains more about what is happening in the film then the film itself. If you came to it completely blind without the description you would be very much confused as to what is going on.

Even still, it is a very ambitious film, both from a film and script perspective. I just think with a little more work it would have been even better.

Agree? Disagree? Find out below:

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Why would someone do this?

It's a question that often gets asked at a time like this. During a crisis or tragedy it's a natural thing to do when there are so few answers. People find it hard to understand violence of any scale, but particularly on the scale of recent memory. You would think that it would be easy to understand given that so much of it happens on a regular basis. We wish it didn't and we wish it was really simple to understand. So much so that we polarize issues of violence into simple terms. The problem is one thing or another. Unfortunately, as with most things related to violence it just isn't that easy.

A lot of talk has started to go around about how we prevent tragedy's such as this from happening in the future, and it is now that we should talk about it and implement things. Where I think a lot of the talk is failing is in the single solution syndrome that develops. Things like 'If only we had tougher gun laws this wouldn't have happened' or 'We need to do more for the mentally ill and that will fix the problem'. In reality, I think that both are necessary to really make any type of difference in the world and much of the arguments that happen after a tragedy such as this are over which should come first.

Perhaps that is why nothing ever really gets resolved when it comes to the issue of guns and violence and mental illness, because in our rush to help the victims we end up forgetting the victims in the process. We are so focused on what can be done to stop more victims from occuring that we have stopped worrying about the people who are already victims of this type of violence. We brush it off as if to say 'The police and rescue workers and psychiatrists and the government will step in and help the victims so we don't need to think about them anymore, they are going to be okay' and then jump into political mode and start pushing our cause over another.

The politics of the situation are the problem that keep us from moving forward on this. We are so quick to take a political position on the subject that we force people to disagree with us rather then actually deal with the problem at hand. This isn't an issue of gun control or mental illness or more religion versus less religion in schools, it's a question of how we deal with tragedy. By which I mean we don't deal with it. In the age of the 24 hour news cycle we have over intellectualized tragedy, even among those who claim not to be intellectuals. We're so quick to analyze and discuss a problem so that we can put it in the proper context that we forget the most important context of all, the fact that people have died.

To point to an example that's fresh in my mind, a conversation arose not long after the tragedy in Newton, CT about why we are not focused on the victims instead of calling for gun control or mental health reform and a number of people came out in favor of gun control as a way of helping the victims. One person even went so far as to say that the best way to honor the victims was to push the tragedy in the faces of people who advocate for guns to show them the error of their ways. It was compared to when a dog craps on the rug.

Does that sound to you like someone who is concerned about the victims and not the political agenda they adhere to? I understand that it was well intentioned. I understand that gun control will help the situation. What I don't understand is why that analogy is at the forefront of someone's mind after a tragedy such as this has occurred. That, to me, is a problem. More of a problem then gun control, more of a problem then mental health reform, more than the media's coverage or the lack of religion in school. The idea that these people are not victims of a tragedy they are examples to be used for whatever political ideal a person is trying to put forward.

Why would someone do this? That depends on who's asking the question and who is answering it. A better question might be why is 'Remember the Victims' being used as a slogan rather than a reminder of what the real focus of the moment should be?

Silver Linings Playbook Review: Can you find the Silver Lining in your life’s Playbook?

“Life is a struggle that no one actually survives.”

It’s a difficult thing to do, figure out how to cope with the world around you and the problems you encounter. Things are hard, they take work and even then there aren’t really any guarantees you’ll achieve anything. Is it any wonder that people go a little crazy? How crazy can things get though? Perhaps what’s crazy is the world around us, or even the people in it. No matter what it is some people can’t cope, or they don’t cope very well. At the core of Silver Lining Playbook is the question of what do you do then. How do you deal with a world that makes you crazy?

The story centers around Pat, a guy recently released from a mental institution after a traumatic incident sent him over the edge with a condition he didn’t know he had. Now living with his parents, he struggles to figure out how to move forward when in some ways he is still very much stuck in the life he left behind. With no job, no prospects and a town full of people who know what happened to him, he tries to find some aspect of his life to hold onto while managing his condition. What he ends up holding onto is his wife. Very much out of his life since the incident, Pat becomes focused on the idea of getting his wife back despite the reality that he isn’t allowed to communicate with her.

Sufficed to say this proves to be more difficult then it seems to him and he begins looking for a work around to this problem through his very supportive friends and family. There’s only one problem, his friends and family aren’t the benchmarks for normality either. And this becomes the perfect mix for a family rom-com with an interesting twist on it. It’s long been a staple of the romantic comedy genre to question the idea of normal. Stories from the 80s and 90s were big on this kind of theme, particularly in the realm of the high school drama version of a romantic comedy. Since then many stories have tried to establish what normal is, or at least what we want normal to be with some success here and there.

For Silver Linings Playbook however, normal is in fact the abnormal. Most of the characters have some strange way of dealing with the world. But in particular what makes it all work is the quirky way in which Pat, as played by Bradley Cooper, lives in the world. He is very honest and direct with people about what he sees or feels yet he does it with a kind of charm and openness about himself that it’s hard to feel insulted by him. Topped off by the fact that he has learned to try and look for the silver lining in even the most horrible things.

What’s interesting is that because of the unusual nature of the characters, I was never quite sure where they will end up. Romantic comedies have a tendency to go in certain ways. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. More recently they’ve tended to get a little ridiculous with their storylines. This film feels neither ridiculous nor cheap. It goes for the emotionally honest moments and with Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Chris Tucker and Bradley Cooper in the roles they manage to hit them pretty well.

Can you find the Silver Lining in your life? I can honestly say that this movie is something of a silver lining in my life right now.