Yes, I watched the movie first and yes, I liked the movie. Yes, it was very similar.
A lot of people I mentioned this to immediately mentioned that they didn't care for the movie. I kind of want to talk about why I liked it and why the book was a lot better.
(quick warning: I am drinking a large glass of wine as I write this and I may become more verbose as the post progresses)
So in the movie there's the guy Pat who has just come out of a mental care facility (which he refers to as "the bad place") and he's separated from his wife Nikki, and his only goal is to win her back. So he works really hard on getting fit and being kind and reading clever books because he thinks those are the things which will win his wife back. His family are all trying to maintain his beliefs and don't communicate well with him. Then he meets Tiffany, a woman who recently lost her spouse. She tells him that if he will be her dance partner for this competition, she will talk to Nikki and giver her messages from him and maybe arrange a meeting. So obviously Pat tries really hard at the dance competition and eventually the truth comes out that Nikki was not ever interested in talking to Pat and that it was Tiffany all along because she loves Pat and then they get together, the end.
The issue that some people had with that is the idea that romantic love fixes people's mental illness. I'd contradict that by saying the movie (and book) encourage us to realize what our weaknesses are, and that we can share love most deeply with someone who sympathizes with those weaknesses. The book has more development of the relationships between Pat and his mother, father, and brother as well. This helps to develop the romantic plotline because Tiffany is a person who tells Pat the truth about the world around him and about himself when all the rest of his family is hiding behind the common interest (football) or just telling him what he already believes. Tiffany doesn't do this, even though she lies to him about communicating with his ex-wife. You might say that she was giving involuntary empty-chair therapy. Not ethical, but possibly effective.
So here's the thing the book does really well: it sets up Pat as the ultimate sympathetic character. We're talking like Of Mice and Men level empathy here. I think the reasons I sympathize so strongly with the character (read: crying like a water park) are two-fold. First, the purity and goodness of his intentions. He loves Nikki, he intends to win her back, he desires nothing else. He works diligently to shape himself into the man he thinks she would want. Second, the disproportion and immediacy of retribution for his shortcomings. Whenever he falls short of his own expectations, there's a huge fallout. These huge consequences make the stakes so high, and I recall the scene in the movie where he is just trying to explain what happened, because he believes if people can see his side, if he can just explain, then it will be ok. But everything has got too crazy, no one wants to hear his side, and the more frantically he tries to convince everyone he's calm and sane, the more unbalanced and dangerous he appears. Have you ever stepped on a dog's tail accidentally and then tried to say sorry to it, but it is trying to say sorry to you at the same time? That's how this made me feel. I'm so sorry, Pat, that you couldn't explain. I'm so sorry that your family lied to you. I'm sorry that your wife cheated on you. It's not because of how you are, it's because of how the world is.
Mental illness is a pretty tough thing to tackle, because you'll have one group of people saying "that's not how it is" and another group saying "it is too" and a third group being all "snap out of it srsly get over yourself". What the book does a good job of saying is that mental illness and, by extension, every huge human emotional experience, is easier to cope with and work through when you know what is real and what is delusion, and when people will listen to what's happening inside you, when you can explain and feel heard. Maybe this story doesn't speak to everyone who's struggled with mental illness, and maybe it's not a realistic portrayal of how to come through it, but it says something valuable about how we perceive those struggling with emotional trauma.
So yeah I really liked this book. It would have been a quick read if I hadn't had to stop for kleenex and hydration so frequently. Imma give it a 10/14, because the writing style was not remarkable.
Up next: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm already finished reading it but I don't know what it's about yet. Needs some more thinking.
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