With Mike Leigh turning 75 tomorrow, we'll be looking at a few of his films. Here's Chris Feil
Of Mike Leigh’s many great films, Happy-Go-Lucky is perhaps the one the has grown most in its potency. Though his films reward multiple viewings, here is one that has grown all the more meaningful as the world around us has become increasingly fraught with depressing news; the benefit of positivity is at once essential and ignored. The film is both a character study of its relentlessly gleeful protagonist Poppy, played to perfection by Sally Hawkins, and about how the world works against her optimistic state of being.
The pull to submit to anger and gloom weighs heavy on our times, and an outlook like Poppy’s can seem so very far away indeed.
Ten years on now, Happy-Go-Lucky feels prescient to the dire state of the world, as if we are becoming more like those annoyed by her cheeriness. Some of us who once saw ourselves in Poppy might have even succumbed to the numbing anger of the every day in the intervening years...
Through Poppy’s experiences, the film asks how we can make room for optimism and examines how we dismiss it, sometimes cruelly so.
The film uses her self-aware affability to comedic effect, as if Poppy is some kind of alien floating above the ground on a cloud of goodwill. Her laughter is sometimes an obstruction or distraction from the task at hand. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye,” she bemusedly says when her bike is stolen early on, the most chipper person to ever be stranded. She’s rather amused by what is out of our control, finding joy by allowing life to happen as it will rather than forcing it to happen as we demand.
And it’s not that Poppy isn’t confronted with circumstances of soul-crushing consequence, as well. She risks safety to listen to a mentally ill man on the street, and connects to his humanity despite his incoherence. When one of her students faces abuse at home, she believes he will be resilient once with the care of social services.
Crucially Leigh makes Poppy a teacher, perhaps a reminder that those who can see things from the bright side are our cultural caregivers, the keepers of our humanity. In Poppy, optimism and kindness are one and the same - and its not as easy as she might make it look. Sometimes it’s her that’s fighting the uphill battle, with her indefatiguable spirit being quietly revolutionary. She is often brushed off as silly, or ignorant of the real world around her, but her belief in the human spirit makes her a substantial, clear-eyed person not to be dismissed.
In so many ways Leigh knows that some of her behavior will annoy us, whether because its outside the rules of how we’re supposed to behave, or our own gloom informing our perceptions, or even because of frustration with ourselves that we’re not more like Poppy. It’s not just that we don’t view compassion as a formidable strength -- the demands we place on ourselves treat it as weakness.
In 2018 you would think that Poppy would read as even more of a willfully ignorant dolt, but think again. It's now easier to see her chipper attitude as a conscious choice. And how her behavior is not as easy to enact in some more trying situations. Take the thing that does momentarily break her, the verbal assault from her driving instructor Scott, the ferocious Eddie Marsan. Poppy is forced to reestablish her boundaries, and does so because it is the only way for Scott to respect the line he has crossed. In doing so, she’s forced to protect that part of herself that wants to continue believing in the world’s Scotts. But the melancholy with which she offers her kindness redefines the tense moment gracefully.
Poppy is never less than full-fleshed person. Much as we might assume naivety or reduce her with a “not a serious person” dismissal, a modest and comedic performance like Sally Hawkins' can be easily underestimated. In many ways Poppy’s demeanor has framed how the actress has been perceived. However it’s her ability to embody and enhance Leigh’s themes of a world at odds with optimism that makes Happy-Go-Lucky linger as long and deep as it does, and shows her impressive skill. For a supposedly sweet film and performance, she makes you feel it in your gut.
So is it over-simplistic to say that we need the Poppys of the world now more than ever? You might say yes, but Poppy - and Leigh - would argue that what she offers isn’t so simple. There is profundity in the bright side, and with Happy-Go-Lucky, Leigh’s rigorous humanity shines even brighter in these darker times. "Be happy!"