4) Silver Linings Playbook
This may seem like a movie out of step with the previous few downer picks, but let me point out that the happy ending of Silver Linings Playbook is kind of purposefully hollow. Hollow is not even the right word—more like a willful delusion. With every movie made by this David O. Russell 2.0 that emerged beginning with The Fighter and continuing through American Hustle (maybe best epitomized by the latter), there’s greater insight into the philosophy and positive cynicism of the man who nearly disappeared from Hollywood following I Heart Huckabees (of which I am an enormous fan, for the record).
American Hustle is an ensemble piece about the various lies people have to tell to motivate themselves and to convince others to get them what they want. Those wants could be to find love, to simply get by and make a living, or to climb the ranks of whatever hierarchy they’re a part of. The Bradley Cooper character in Silver Linings is a different kind of hustler: he makes a pledge to try to put a positive spin on everything in his life, even if that spin rings false, or is demonstrably false. The result is that he finds a decent mate (for the time being, at least) in the Jennifer Lawrence character because he was trying to impress his ex-wife.
The hustle behind the film itself is that this happy ending is so contrived and feels slightly false, but we buy it anyway, because it’s a nicer way to end the story. There’s a cynicism to this, but it’s also kind of a heroic way to confront existential questions that would otherwise paralyze us entirely.