ARGO/SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

These All-American crowd-pleasers don’t have much in common except for their utterly shameless crowdpleasing.  Not that I begrudge said pleasing, mind you, but the highest cinematic honor in the land merits at least a little of the kind of cruel scrutiny that ingratiation doesn't often quite bear.  So, let us consider one scene from each.  In Ben Affleck’s Argo, the last minute discovery of our heroes’ covert escape leads to a chase down the tarmac and cross-cuts between the airline cabin and hysterical guards with potboiler music shaking the subs as the Iranian convoy gets closer and closer until the nose tips, the wheels fold, and finally ah!  Sweet, sweet international airspace, and US foreign meddling lives to see another day.  But D.W. Griffithizing a civilian extraction is A/V club stuff compared to a scene late in David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, in which every single character in the cast gathers in one room to work out as methodically as any script doctor can humanly manage how the resolution of each and every plot thread in the film will come to rest on the outcome of an amateur dance competition.  This sequence works overtime covering its tracks with seriocomic bluster; about three minutes of sparring Philly accents made me want to cut my fucking ears off.  Yet of the two films, I preferred Russell’s, probably due to screwball humor soundly outranking patriotism among my viewing priorities (but possibly due to the delectable Jennifer Lawrence).  That's not to say I loved or even particularly liked it, but protagonist Pat's violent response to A Farewell to Arms' feel-bad ending absolves many sins, not least of all the hilarious concept of a man with a heavy Hindi accent observing that "DeSean Jackson is the man."  Affleck, for his part - as director and as dashing leading man - plays a farce premise straight, presumably to honor its origins in truth, which begs the question: is a formula thriller’s litany of contrivances really more dignified than satire?  All the operative tastefulness leaves over for the funnymen on hand – John Goodman and Alan Arkin, of whom the world is enjoying a welcome resurgence as of late – are hollow laughs flattering received wisdom on what makes Hollywood tick.  My colleague Zach Campbell pegs their banter as not so much witty as “witty” (echoes of Richard Jameson’s screed against “style”), and that's really the last of anything that ever needs to be said about it.  Its politics meanwhile leave me cold, which is to say neutral, but Kevin B. Lee lays down the law on that eloquently enough.  Incidentally, he also thinks Silver Linings deserves Best Picture, "because it's a revealing reflection of the world we live in," which is about as simultaneous a naive fantasy and harrowing omen you're likely to get this Oscars season.