Joy

Few film­mak­ing careers dis­play a cre­ative trans­for­ma­tion as dras­tic as that of David O Russell’s. There was a smug­ness to his ear­ly work cou­pled with his infa­mous on-set out­bursts that led to him being reject­ed by both his indus­try and his audi­ence. What­ev­er soul-search­ing took place between 2004’s I Heart Huck­abees and 2010’s The Fight­er result­ed in a dra­mat­ic shift in Russell’s approach to cin­e­ma and, seem­ing­ly, to life itself.

If there’s a sin­gle qual­i­ty that under­lines the director’s post-2010 out­put, it’s a sense of com­pas­sion. It guides every deci­sion. The Fight­er, Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book, Amer­i­can Hus­tle and now Joy adopt a human­ist out­look in which dam­aged, incon­ve­nient char­ac­ters and fam­i­lies are accept­ed on their own terms, lov­ing­ly and del­i­cate­ly, as the unlike­ly authors of their mod­est fates.

The oth­er devel­op­ment in Russell’s career is the sta­ble of actors he now draws from. Joy is the third suc­ces­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion in a row with Jen­nifer Lawrence, who was just 21 when she took on her Oscar-win­ning role in Sil­ver Lin­ings. In spite of her age, Lawrence has the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to con­vey lived expe­ri­ence with her depic­tions of spiky sul­len­ness and wide-eyed charis­ma. This spe­cial qual­i­ty makes Joy her most ide­al ves­sel yet. Rus­sell wrote the film with her in mind, re-work­ing an orig­i­nal script by Annie Mumolo.

The title char­ac­ter – based on Joy Mangano, the inven­tor of the Mir­a­cle Mop – is a divorced sin­gle­ton and matri­arch of an eccen­tric house­hold in which her ex-hus­band (Edgar Ramirez) and father (Robert De Niro) live togeth­er in the base­ment, her moth­er (Vir­ginia Mad­sen) refus­es to budge from her bed­room where she per­pet­u­al­ly watch­es soap operas, and her lov­ing grand­moth­er (Diane Ladd, the film’s nar­ra­tor) is always around the cor­ner with a watch­ful eye.

Piv­ot­ing around var­i­ous flash­backs and fan­ta­sy sequences, we see Joy as a gift­ed young girl, cre­at­ing things, dream­ing of a bright future. This is jux­ta­posed with a grim real­i­ty where she’s shown as being the epit­o­me of untapped poten­tial: a young woman who mar­ried the wrong guy ear­ly and was then bur­dened by her duties as a daugh­ter and moth­er. ​“Time moves for­ward, time moves back­ward, time stands still,” our nar­ra­tor says as a scene between Joy and her best friend segues into a flash­back: we see the first night she met her hus­band, the wed­ding, the failed rela­tion­ship, the divorce, and back again – all moments exist­ing ful­ly, but tan­gled up in the memory.

When Joy stum­bles on a bril­liant idea for a mop with a detach­able head that wrings itself, she asks her fam­i­ly for a leap of faith, and her father’s new part­ner (Isabel­la Rosselli­ni) for a gen­er­ous invest­ment. The ven­ture leads Joy on a rags to rich­es tale as she tries to stake her claim in the world of com­merce. From there the film moves unex­pect­ed­ly and spon­ta­neous­ly towards her suc­cess, con­stant­ly refram­ing notions of life, loy­al­ty and love. Rus­sell and cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Linus Sand­gren have found a per­fect har­mo­ny in their sen­si­bil­i­ties, cap­tur­ing Joy’s rocky path with warmth and emo­tion­al vibran­cy. Joy is a film about life’s defi­ance of expec­ta­tions. It defies them right back.