 Yeah, if you have sex with food, it's just a perversion to eat people. It's probably a felony. Yeah, we go to jail for that. Comfortable? Yeah. Comfortable? Yeah. Yeah. Welcome back to Life Lessons in Film, and today we'll be making sense of life through silver linings playbook. Playbook. Yeah. Yeah. Starring... Radnick Cooper. And Jennifer Lawrence. And Jennifer Lawrence. Disclaimer. Disclaimer, yes. We did a quick refresher on bipolar disorder. Not even refresher. Yeah. Because we don't really know a lot about it. No, just... Pick up. As we're talking about it, we're gonna try and make as few mistakes about the disorder as possible. It's possible, yeah. We are not clinically approved. Yeah. I liked it overall, right? The story follows Pat, who was imprisoned after... What did he do? He attacked his wife's lover? Yeah, wife's lover. It was like a professor or something at her where she was working at the school, I think. Yeah. And they were engaging in the shower. In the carnal knowledge. In the shower. Which is hard to do. Which is hard to do, honestly. The movies lie. Yeah. Beats the dude up. The living tar and the molasses out of the guy and ends up getting arrested. And then the wife gets a restraining order against him. He spends time in probably a mental institution. Yeah. A mental institution. And then he's there for a while, loses weight, which is apparently... An asylum of sorts? Yeah. I'm actually not sure. We're not sure. What a contemporary word for that is. Is anymore, yeah. He works on himself while he's in there with the view to get Nikki back. That's the wife, the name of the wife, who cheated on him. Yeah. And one of those ways that he's doing that, besides getting better, is mentally is to lose weight because apparently that used to be a sore point for both of them. And he starts to lose back with his parents and tries to spend that time to work on himself enough and all the points that he felt were the issue with the relationship so he could win his wife back. Yeah. Starts reading books that he thinks if he read these books she would be happy. One of the points movies that he's still kind of missing the point is that sure you can lose weight but it's like, you know, there's more to it than that. He also meets this girl, Tiffany, who's friends with Nikki, his ex-wife or his wife still, a strange wife. And they start to form an unconventional... Well, her sister is friends with Nikki. She's not friends with Nikki. Oh yeah, friends and friends. Yeah. Yeah, there's a friends and friends thing. So initially the sister, Tiffany's sister then tries to hook Tiffany up with Pat. And then Pat's not interested because he's still hung up on Nikki. Yeah. They end up forming a kind of friendship that isn't really a friendship but Pat says, I want you to deliver a letter to Nikki, please. Yeah. And she's like, okay, well, what do I get out of it? Because I always give people things and I never get anything in return. So I have this desk competition that I want to participate in. I would like for you to be my partner then. Yeah. Yeah, tit for tat. Yeah. And so that's basically the relationship throughout the movie. They're getting ready. They started an acquaintancehip, getting to know each other through the dance competition and they end up, spoiler alert, kind of getting together at the end. Yeah. And I think it's better now. Yeah, me too. I like that part where she talks about that one point where she's saying, wait, I keep, you know, like, I'm, you know what? I'm actually sick of this thing that I keep doing where I keep giving so much to people and like, I'm depressed right now. I'm going through a lot of shit. My husband died and I'm still broken up about it, understandably. And you know what? I'd actually maybe like to get some reciprocal help here from Brad Pitt, Bradley, Bradley Cooper's character. Pat, from Pat. He's like, but you already agreed to me not having to do something for you. Now you're changing the terms. Yeah. Eventually you're a bit like, yeah, I can see where she's like, and it's that kind of thing that they talk about, you know, or it's, which has been said where just because you've agreed on something for doesn't mean you can, you can't alter it later if you feel like it's, it's not working for you. Exactly. I like that too, because in relationships, obviously you don't want to do that with like legal agreements and things and you don't want to alter the deal further for certain things. I mean, obviously even in legal agreements, you can alter it, but you'd have to get the consensus of both parties. But in relationships, right? Yeah. That's something that I've also personally struggled with. I think it is such an important lesson to learn that you could have agreed to relate with a person in a certain way for 50 years. And then the whole time you were unhappy about something. And you can say on the 51st year that, you know what, we have been relating in this way for 50 years. I don't like it. It has not served me. Can we have some reciprocity in the relationship? I would like you to consider adjusting ABC to accommodate so that we're both accommodated in this relationship. And a lot of the times it's true. People will be like, and you, and this is why then you're going to question yourself or hesitate to ask for this addressment because you're thinking, well, I have been doing this for 50 years. Is it fair for me all of a sudden if I've been doing it for 50 years to want to change? Yes, it is fair because we're people. And a lot of the times we tend to like to please other people versus ourselves if you are, you know, kind of like a person who's, who's inclined in that way. The problem is, it's easy to get used to the situation for both people. I guess the test for whether or not the, the relationship is lucrative anyway is whether or not the person will be amenable to adjusting to your personal needs. And if they don't, it means you cut those ties and you don't stick around. It isn't, it's okay. It is a good thing. Never mind okay. It is important to have reciprocity in your relationship always. You know, like at the end of the day, I think when you go through some kind of, you go through trauma, you can, a lot of people will do self-destructive things, which I think you do those because it's easier than thinking about, okay, this person died and trying to deal with it, you know, and to try to heal or to think about your pain. You'd rather distract yourself from the pain. You'd rather not go to see a shrink and talk to them about issues because that means you'd have to think about the guilt that you feel and you don't want to be at home like thinking about all of these things. So what you do, you distract yourself. People distract themselves in different ways. Either you're going to go drinking like crazy or you're going to eat a heck of a lot of food or you're going to go and have sex. These are all the same things. These are all coping mechanisms. So at the end of the day, I think one thing that she does learn when she's talking about taking and giving, I mean giving too much and not getting anything as an in return is that when you are having these people over these men, you know, you're engaging with them sexually, you do realize that they're just there for themselves, right? You want companionship. I think that's what it is when she's enticing these people to have sex with her. I think she wants that kind of affection or companionship. But like, you know, drinking or dealing with food, it's not the same thing as connection or companionship or feeling full or, you know, feeling good from the alcohol. It simulates it for a bit. Yeah. And then you just kind of realize, yeah, like either if you're having alcohol, for example, you wake up from your drunken stupor and you realize, okay, well, that didn't help. My problems are still here. After the sexual engagements with these random men, they just leave. They don't care about who you are. They got what they wanted and they leave. And you realize that, yeah, I didn't get anything there. So I think that that's where she was coming from. Yeah, the father. Robert De Niro, Pat's father. So at the end, he does kind of redeem himself, but he was a problem. The entire movie, entirely setting up this whole gambling agreement with his friend where not only did his, you know, his football team had to win, but then his son had to get a certain score at the dance competition. Yeah. A lot of dysfunction. You just put this, these pressures on people all the time just for the excitement of the gamble. This movie obviously is doing with family dysfunction and is dealing with mental illness. Just looking at how the dad is, it kind of reminded me of there's this, I don't know if we've talked about Gabbermate here. And he talks about how a lot of times with mental, people with mental challenges, it often stems from family dysfunction and that it's not necessarily a biological predisposition. And he talks about how in the medical field, a lot of doctors are treating the symptom and not the cause, the cause being family dysfunction and therefore arrested development for the child. Because if you had a father like Pat has, who turns you into his good luck charm and makes you believe that if every single time, you don't do what he asks you to do and the football team loses, you've caused misfortune on the whole family because he's trying, he's betting all the time wanting to put money together for his business. And the dad is resting all of these things on Pat. He spent basically like the family's savings and then he's like, well, you got to do it because otherwise we lose all the money. And taking zero responsibility for himself and so this and placing it all on Pat's shoulders, isn't it? And so for me, when I saw this dysfunction and I see Pat being bipolar and just how his bipolar manifests itself, manifests, there were a lot of similarities there with his own dad, not really being aware of reality, of his own kind of reality, not being aware, recognizing the things that he does to his son, the detrimental effect that his behavior has on his son, his wife, his entire family because it's not just Pat. But yeah, I was watching this and I was thinking a lot about Gabbermate and just how much your own family can affect your mental state because that kind of pressure and that kind of, he talks about, Gabbermate talks about your brain as a human being developed in a certain way, but if you are growing up in a certain kind of family, that doesn't give you the tools, the nurturing, the safety, the security that a parent should afford you, which clearly Pat's dad is not giving him that security because here's Pat's dad making him feel like you're responsible for every single thing and you need to win, you need to make sure that we know you're the one who's screwed up here. There's no security there, you're operating on a sensor. Am I going to be a good kid today or am I going to be a bad kid today? The whole family, again, when they have that dysfunction and lack of communicating and if you're talking about, you know, you can never talk about the person directly. So at one point they're all telling like, are you comfortable with lying to Pat saying that his wife is going to be at the show and this was between the mom and the dad and Tiffany, the girl that's doing the dance thing with them. They're really trying to rationalize, this is a justifiable lie. And then, you know, at one point also Tiffany feels bad about it, but they still feel like, no, this is better than just telling Pat the truth. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because the mom is so opposed to this and then the dad is like, yeah, but you did it in that situation. Yeah, remember, you lied about Tiffany, I think she somehow like was telling Tiffany where Pat would run or something so they could be down because they were trying to go for something. So, but yeah, it's also that kind of like, well, you also have lied. So that means that you have to agree to this thing. To my lie too. Yeah. Let's just keep lying together and then no one can ever stop this cycle. Yeah. Did Pat really have a fighting chance in that kind of family, to be honest? Yeah. Can you really, you know, how like you can grow in the place that makes you sick, that entire family, I think this dance with Tiffany was the thing that kind of, he was spending less time at home and he was spending more time with her practicing for the dance. And I think that that was focus on a purpose. Yeah. And also just removing himself from the situation, right? The dysfunction, the family dysfunction that aggravates his mental illness. Yeah. Which shows, you know, how, you know, again, as kind of in my mind, kind of poking a hole in the idea that, you know, people are just born a certain way and they're only capable of certain things is a lot of times it seems like that because it's hard to get yourself out of whatever situation. If you're in a situation that keeps you stuck in a certain way, that is your world. That is your reality. So it's hard to see that there, if you just changed a couple of things, got a little, you know, got a little farther away from that, that you could then, you know, grow in ways that just wouldn't really make any sense in the moment. Because you just, you know, you just think, well, that's, that's just how, how you are. And that's a really invisible kind of, you know, prison or kind of cage to see, you know. They're not even to say that we're completely, you know, spot on. Who knows. Just giving our opinions. This is, yeah, like it's, it's an opinion just based on personal experience and based on a lot of reading and interest in these kinds of matters. Observations. Yeah. And of course, we're just trying here. We're just trying, you know, like maybe that's not the case. You know what I mean? Maybe that's not the case. And it also obviously depends on the extent of your mental illness. This may not necessarily apply to all mental illness, right? I've been, I've been wrong more than I've been not. Yeah. So for me, I mean, why, I think there's a lot of credence to that idea that we're affected a lot of environmental factors is, I think we've all been through where there's a very, you know, toxic negative person that you're around. It can really bring down the party, you know. So if you have to deal with that as like every co-worker is like that, and you have to go there every day, all day for years, it's going to affect you. Yeah. So just imagine when that, but when you're a kid, when you're even more vulnerable, impressionable. Exactly. Even worse. And so imagine if you're a kid, you're doing that for years. That's when that, that's when you develop these things, they're much more rooted, you know, in you. Because yeah, that's what you grew up in. People can look at a person with bipolar and say, this is what happens when a person has bipolar. And it can be very true. But at the same time, all of these same things I've seen in myself, you know, looking, not looking at myself and my contribution to whatever pain I may be going through in the moment and blaming other people instead of just like, okay, how am I participating in this thing? I think that's something that people have like a lot of people have experienced bipolar or not, you know, not necessarily looking at history in the past and looking at, okay, this has happened in the past, not taking stock of your past relationships, of your past experiences to and how it affects the present and how you can change it. Because this is what Pat is doing. Like he's not taking stock of the things that he's done in the past and how they're affecting his reality and how he needs to therefore make changes himself to adjust and to find happiness. He's not taking stock of these things. He looks at things. Okay, if I lose weight, then my life will get back together again. That's an easy fix for him. Yeah, not to say that sort of losing weight is easy for him. But you know, that's something that he can kind of measure. He can see, you know, that doesn't require looking back at all the things that he caused and all the stuff that he had no control over growing up that affected him, but that led him to that that takes more time, more work, you know, which that's harder for people in general. It's harder for people to do the work. I get that. The relationship between Tiffany and Pat is just, it starts, it starts sad but ends so good. This was definitely a feel good movie, but not in a, I don't know, like there's obviously an aversion to people who take themselves seriously to feel good. It was a good feel movie. But it was a really good feel. This is what I feel, feel good movies should be. When I feel good, feel good movies should feel good. There's so many things about it that I love. Number one, they create an environment in which both of them can grow and get better because their families are dysfunctional and they are not the foundation on which someone who is struggling with mental illness or trauma can really truly change and grow and get and heal. So they afford these things to each other. They provide themselves this platform and I think that was, I really cherish that and I wish a lot of people would find relationships with people or pursue relationships with people that afford them this kind of healthy foundation on which to get to grow and become the best version of themselves as possible. This is the number one. Number two, I love things that they, the fights that they have. Tiffany shares something about because at this point, Pat is so blind to his own reality and he thinks that he's right and everybody else is wrong, which apparently is another symptom of bipolar disorder. But he thinks this way and Tiffany shares about the fact that she slept with all of these men at the office and some women apparently and he then is like, oh man, you are worse than me. We are not the same. You slept with all these women. I mean, these people, I didn't do that. I'm so much better than you are. And he's like, yeah, but you were just as interested and enticed and completely drawn in when I was telling you about this thing. You know, my engagements with these, so it was the same with this. He really, he really also wanted to feel superior to her. Like he wasn't as messed up. Yeah, like he was feeling ashamed of where he was at, but was always for a while fighting the fact. And then she's like, get off your arm. Yeah, which is also very interesting, right? Because I think sometimes people who do have insecurities about themselves might end up pursuing relationships with people who they think, okay, well, you're lower down the totem pole and you're going to make me feel better because in this hierarchy, I'm definitely better than you. And I think with Pat, it was that where he's like, I'm pursuing this relationship, whatever it is, because you make me feel better about myself. Because as far as I'm concerned, you're worse off than I am. And it's nice to see that there's someone who's worse off than I am. Very bad relationship, very bad, bad foundation. However, again, like I said, it started off rocky, but then it gets, it progresses and gets better because of the fights. Like one of the fights she's, so she shares about the fact that, okay, I slept with all of these people. And he's like, oh, ew, you did all of that crap. Oh my God. And she's like, how could you be, I was vulnerable to you. So extremely vulnerable to you. And you judge me. You know, that was one of my favorite scenes because I think that I know for me personally that that has been a fear in my life. And it has been an experience with some friends that were not necessarily great, where you are vulnerable and people, we are vulnerable with, we want to be vulnerable. But when we are sometimes people use that against us. And then because of that experience later, you then are more reluctant to share and open up. And obviously that puts a cap on the kind of open and good relationships that you can have with people if you don't want to be vulnerable anymore. But I did like that a lot because she wanted to be that way. She wanted that kind of relationship with him. But he was judgmental of her. And I think it was just that reminder from me personally to always, when you are interacting with people, whenever anybody shares something with themselves that might be completely outside the realm of anything you could personally conceptualize or ever want to do to leave your own personal instinct aside towards that specific specific thing. And understand that you're very different to people and people do things for many reasons. And you cannot, you know, just having just met a person and not knowing the history that comes with that person just then decide, Oh, you're a horrible human being because you did this disgusting thing that I would never do. You know? And then when you would choose willing to push back against that ill treatment, then he respects that. Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing again, a lot of times I think we're afraid to do that to call bad behavior out or judginess and things. But a lot of times people will actually think on that or just, you know, think twice next time or reflect on it. And yeah, it's important to be able to do that. But if you do then get someone who's defensive, because there are people who if you do express your needs or if you expressed that, you know, you're hurting me when you do this, that's not being confrontational, but there are people who can see that as confrontational. Yeah, who take you expressing your needs and your desires or wants and vulnerability as conflict, which is interesting, right? And that that's the kind of, which I would say, again, also comes from a certain kind of trauma where vulnerability is seen as confrontation. Yeah. It gets you all. Yeah, because, because obviously then there are people who may not necessarily want to want you to remind them of these certain things that they experienced their own vulnerabilities. And if you're openly sharing your vulnerabilities, it might remind them of that. And so they don't really, it's kind of like, you know, yeah. So, which is also the tricky thing. I guess why human relationships are so tough, because we all need that sort of that really good, really juicy vulnerability. But exactly if the other person is not willing to accept it, or they're willing to exploit it, then that's what causes the deepest hurt, because you use the thing that the person needs the most and opens up the most. And then so it's a, yeah, but people will keep doing that. And if you're someone that is not conscious of the people that you attract and you keep attracting people that will exploit your vulnerability, you know, then you're just going to be like, well, I guess everyone just does that without realizing, you know, maybe again, it's the environment you're in with. Oh, I was going to say, and this, this seems very real to me where Pat's dad is able to see, you know, I don't even know if your wife ever really cared about you because those kind of people that are dysfunctional or exploitative can notice that in others, but they don't necessarily notice when they're doing it themselves or they don't really think about it because Pat's dad was aware at the end, he's like, go with Tiffany, she's clearly in love with you. You daft if you don't realize it. Honestly, I don't think he ever cared and you don't seem to get that either. And, but at the same time, you know, he comes to him one time and he starts crying, sitting by his bed, being like, I really just want to spend some time with you. But then another times, again, he'll lie to him, manipulate him. So I think it's one of those, you know, it's kind of, I think it's one of those people where it's inconsistent and I think like, I don't, I think that was actually done intentionally. I don't know if at the end it's supposed to see that the father grew much. I think he's just one of those people that when it serves him, he'll be open with his son or he'll be like, tell him, tell it to him straight and then at other times still be selfish and just use people as pawns for his risks and his gambles. The whole family revolves around the dad and his own needs. So in the moment when he says to Pat, I want, I'm trying all of these things, I want us to get closer. Who is that for? It's not necessarily for Pat, it's for himself. You know, the whole time. Let's get closer so that you can be my good luck charm and watch the game while everyone, well mom cooks us food and then I can just sit there and watch the game and win money. Yeah. And even if he does want, in that moment when he's crying, even if he does want that general relationship with Pat, that closer relationship, it's still again for him. Always. It's always for him. That's when he wants it. When Pat wants it, that doesn't matter. If you're coming from that background, you're most likely gonna, if you don't deal with that, you go and you find a partner who does exactly the same thing in the same way that your dad did or, you know, because that's how we are as human beings, right? Like, even if, because you think that's normal, your brain associates dysfunction, abuse, unhealthy relationships, neglect, whatever you, you, whatever it is, your brain associates it with normalcy. Because that's what you were socialized into. Don't realize what we're doing it, you know, when you kind of realize, you know, your first day of college, first week, you know, it's all frosty and you're, you're trying to kind of mingle and you just find yourself attracted to certain people. It's so unconscious. Everyone just kind of forms within a week or two, forms these groups and a lot of times it's the familiarity that causes these groups to form. Yeah. Familiarity and function or dysfunction. So I think the moral of the story there is just keep trying. Yeah. Keep different, meeting different people. If you're feeling uneasy and you're finding yourself in a bad situation and look at your past. Just know that peace is attainable. Peace is attainable When they're like, peace is attainable and don't give up. Yeah. Peace is attainable. That's the moral. Yeah. It's moral of life. Yeah. So yeah, that's about a lot of stuff we got from that movie. Yeah. And yeah, I don't know if you guys also picked up on those things and what else did you notice? Let us know. Silver lining's playbook. Yeah. Yeah. Solid. Indeed. All right. It's still next time. That's a wrap.