Happy-Go-Lucky

Let me just say right now before I start in on all my thoughts about Mike Leigh and what has happened with Mike Leigh over time, that I'm deeply in love with Sally Hawkins. I love her pretty face and her funny teeth and that odd twitchy thing she does with her breath. I loved her in Fingersmith, and in Persuasion, and even though I might have forgotten she was in Tipping the Velvet, I am sure I loved her in that as well.

In Alma, Michigan, where I went to college, there were just two pathetic video stores (in one, I had a fight about The Godfather with the clerk and was too shy return), but the Alma College Library had one wall of amazing movies. This is where I discovered a delightful movie called Life is Sweet, which introduced me to the following: David Thewlis, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, Jane Horrocks (maybe you remember her as Bubble on Absolutely Fabulous? If you are reading this and you have not seen Little Voice, please go add it to your queue right now) and Mike Leigh.

Early in his career, Mike Leigh made a bunch of movies (many for TV) that were just about perfect as far as I'm concerned. In particular I am thinking of Meantime and Life is Sweet -- these little movies expose the ordinary lives of ordinary people, most of them middle class or poor, who are naive and optimistic, cheerful, pathetic, racist, charming, sincere, conniving, funny, tired. The dialogue is mostly improvised, and the actors are amazing - Meantime was one of very first movies of both Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, as well as Alfred Molina. I loved these movies because they made me see both the good and the bad in ordinary people, and they left me feeling hopeful, believing in a sort of basic humanity that could make life worth living. This sounds like hyperbole, but it's pretty much how I feel.

Then I saw Naked, or rather, started to see it. Naked is a weird exploration of sex and power and rape, and it's probably a good movie, but I just wasn't compelled enough by the story to endure all the horrific images. So I turned it off. Since then, Mike Leigh has made a lot of other quite good movies, and I have seen some of them: Vera Drake, Topsy Turvy, Secrets & Lies. The ones I've seen have been solid movies, but sort of weighty and important. None of them have been, for me, quite the revelation those earlier movies were.

Happy-Go-Lucky is the Mike Leigh movie I have been waiting for. There is no major conflict/conflict resolution, no Big Issues, just an almost (but not quite) impossibly optimistic person, living her pretty good life. It is a two-hour defense of cheerfulness. When you meet Poppy, you might think she is not a great teacher, because you might think she is a pushover, who gets by on charm with her students and everyone else. Poppy's classroom is chaotic and colorful. But when it comes down to it, when someone (her driving instructor, Eddie Marsan) pushes her too far, she is very capable of drawing a line, always with compassion.

The only weak point in the movie is a way-too-easy scene with a counselor (/love interest), who psychoanalyzes a young boy in about ten seconds flat. "Why are you angry? Draw me a picture. Why is your mother's boyfriend in a different room? He hits you? That's not very nice." But even that character subsequently won me over with his awkward first-date flirting.

I've just discovered that a BUNCH of Mike Leigh's early movies are instant-watchable on netflix. This is very good news.

p.s. You can watch a tiny fuzzy version of Meantime right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgFLbDkXeuQ