Questions for discussion
• What is your immediate response to the film? What did you enjoy about it, and did you have
any reservations?
• How effective are Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence’s central performances? How do
they each convey their character’s particular quirks and struggles? How sympathetic did you
find Pat and Tiffany as protagonists?
• Mental illness is a difficult theme for a film to handle, especially a comedy. How effectively
does the film balance humour with its more serious elements? If you or somebody you know
has experienced mental illness personally, how accurate and helpful did you feel the film’s
perspective was?
• ‘We so often get caught in this state of negativity, and it’s a poison.’ – Pat
Pat emerges from the psychiatric hospital determined to make a new start. What did you
make of his ‘excelsior’ strategy, and determination to find ‘silver linings’? How far can positive
thinking get us in life?
• ‘I’m not OK. Don’t tell anybody.’ – Ronnie (John Ortiz)
Pat and Tiffany are not the only characters who appear to have mental health problems, or
some kind of internal turmoil impacting their lives. Which other characters seem to have
undiagnosed issues? What point might the director be making through this?
Questions for discussion
• What draws Tiffany to Pat, and vice versa? What role do honesty and vulnerability play in
their relationship? To what extent – and in which contexts – is it helpful to be open
about mental health issues, or other struggles which we face?
• Tiffany claims that her sister Veronica loves it when she has problems. In what ways can we
be tempted to use other people’s problems to make ourselves feel better? Why is the
human urge to be ‘normal’ so strong?
• ‘You can’t be happy all the time.’ – Ronnie
In what ways might we be under cultural pressure to be happy – or at least to appear happy?
How could such pressure be damaging, and how can we alleviate it?
• ‘Humanity’s just nasty, and there’s no silver lining.’ – Tiffany
What view of human nature, and of the world, do we take away from the film? How might
mental illness complicate our ideas about morality, especially moral responsibility? Is it
possible to be both a realist and an optimist when it comes to human nature, and to the
bigger human story?
• ‘We’re not liars like they are.’ – Tiffany
What truths might Tiffany and Pat have access to which their ostensibly more ‘normal’ friends
are missing out on? How truthful is the film about life’s difficulties, and the solutions we
should look for?