Movie Analysis: Silver Linings Playbook

In this activity report, I will be analyzing the different components of emotions, the process of listening, the different relational stages and the different dialectic tensions that the viewers are exposed to within the movie, Silver Linings Playbook. This movie has quite a lot of material to analyze due to the events that occur in the plot.

Silver Linings playbook is a movie about a Bipolar man named Pat Solatano, who had an anger lapse, when he found his wife cheating on him with a coworker. 8 months after being in a mental institution, he met a widow named tiffany, who turned to sex in order to satisfy the pain she feels towards her late husband’s death. The two characters find a way to help each other while their lives are in shambles.

In this scene, we see that they are both quite open about their past, which most people would find hard to share, therefore the dialectic tension of openness/privacy, specifically concerning internal dialectics is emphasized, as they seem to share too much, without having to doubt whether the information they are sharing is too sensitive. The second and only other dialectic tension that is portrayed within the movie is the fact that we saw that every time Pat would run, Tiffany would run and try to communicate with him therefore this could be an example of novelty/predictability dialectic as even though she knew where and when he ran, the reason she would do it is because she was very curious and wanted to know more about

I believe that the root issue in all interpersonal interactions is the way we choose to handle our emotions. No certain way of processing one’s own emotions is the correct manner, however one way could be more appropriate than another, for example I know a lot of people who tend to bottle up and mask their emotions, they are the angriest people I know, while they successfully hide their emotions from their loved ones, they fail to remain emotionally stable in everything else in their lives, however their reaction in certain situations may be more appropriate than those of Tiffany’s at the diner. On the other hand the way Tiffany handled her emotions at the diner, may have left her feeling relieved of releasing all that anger. Therefore, to conclude I believe that there is no perfect way to interact and that is the reason we all face difficulties with it, specially when we are just starting to get to know the other