The Words

A young married writer (Bradley Cooper) in New York after some years of  struggling, suddenly rises to the top with his latest novel only to discover that the journey comes with a personal price to pay. Where does one even begin in describing this film?  In a word, no pun inteneded, it's just brilliant.  Not yet having seen Silver Linings Playbook, it's the best performance I've seen Bradley Cooper in so far.  Needless to say, the entire cast, consisting of Cooper, Olivia Wilde, Jeremy Irons, and Zoe Saldana, were outstanding in this remarkable drama, love story, and mystery that doesn't stop unfolding.  It's this unfolding of the story within the story and the ambiguity it rest on that leaves each viewer fully invested in the experience.  The Words sure enough is about writing and the rippling power of words to uplift, destroy, and manifest love.  But it's also about our humanity in pain and regret, survival, redemption, and healing.  In today's world, it begs the question of what does success and happiness mean to each of us and are we content in our choices of one or the other. For myself as a film blogger, it certainly was an innate delight to view this and be so viscerally affected in a refreshing way that these meager words will not entirely convey without being proceeded by a spoiler alert.  Rottentomatoes has given this film a meager 22% favorable review, but I sharply disagree as I did of their  77% rating of  Dredd.