Poppy’s inquiry into her driving instructor’s constant vexation signals what’s unique about her own joie de vivre: She works at it. Like most of Leigh’s usually working-class subjects, Polly inhabits a social context where people betray the influence of class, economics and cultural tradition—whether they know it or not. Her smile is a litmus test of everyday struggles. It has often seemed that Leigh presents characters (the single mother of Secrets & Lies; the conflicted artists of Topsy-Turvy;the overly busy charwoman of Vera Drake) as part of a quasi-Marxist diagram—the ultimate progression of Britain’s class-conscious cinema. But the details of these characterizations go far beyond propaganda.
The peculiarities of Leigh’s characters demonstrate how ruthlessly close and almost analytical his (and his collaborators/actors´) view of human behavior is. Poppy’s insistent happiness might appear lunatic; but to think so would be snobby, if not downright callous.
That’s because Happy-Go-Lucky offers a transcendently humanist portrait. Looking at Poppy work with unruly children (“You got to love ’em—or otherwise you’d kill ’em”); drinking with her co-workers; coping with her bickering sisters; and her uncanny simpatico with roommate Zoe (Alexis Zegerman) reveals a life of spontaneous moral choices. She has a pixilated sense of justice that recalls the clairvoyant Madame Arkadi in David Lean’s Blithe Spirit who was also memorably introduced breezily riding a bicycle.
Forced by (bad) luck to become a motorist, Poppy takes driving lessons from Scott (Eddie Marsan), a pent-up Londoner offended by her carefree air, sexy boots and lace pantyhose. Polly and Scott’s mutual combat (he’s irritated, she’s tickled) focuses Leigh’s strategy of testing Poppy’s optimism.
While observing occupational behavior, personal obsessions come out in private, often neurotic language. Poppy encounters several styles of coping and not-coping (among a Flamenco dance teacher, a physiotherapist and a tramp), but with Scott she confronts tragedy. Like Naked’s Johnny, Scott isn’t necessarily wrong about society’s chaos (“The American dream never happened.The American nightmare is already here.The disease of multiculturalism!”), but he’s twisted into irrational hatred—bile rots his teeth.
More than Poppy’s opposite, Scott’s the disappointment she defies. He calls her: “Arrogant, destructive.You celebrate chaos.”Their duels illustrate the difficulty of managing a day in our fractious world.
This contrast provides Happy-Go- Lucky’s triumph.Through Poppy, Leigh realizes the wisdom expressed in “Happiness Is an Option,” the awesome 2002 Pet Shop Boys song that advised: “It is not easy/ It was a strange feeling/ Like a law repealing/Itself.” Leigh has never before answered the pessimism of socialist critique; he just expertly scrutinized its truths. But Poppy’s optimism brings a richer, almost spiritual, quality to his vision. Leigh’s previous schematic plot structures justified themselves by verging into dour realism; now (through Dick Pope’s bright cinemascope imagery) there’s vivacity. His counterpoint face-offs don’t tell us what to think, but what to feel: As when Poppy stops a schoolyard bully by bringing in a children’s social worker (“He helps you with hard things,” the boy says). Poppy later asks Scott if he was bullied as a child.This turn sparks the sense that we’re all child-like, though usually without any of the benevolent sisterly overview that Poppy embodies.
As always, the quality of performance Leigh solicits is amazing. Sally Hawkins’ angled, cheery face recalls Geraldine Chaplin’s, and she masters several expressive gestures simultaneously. Her performance reaches deeply, buoyantly, into private idiosyncrasy—as when Sally spreads her arms, wing-like, before making love. Comedy comes from making the mundane poignant. Poppy’s fast patter reveals her inner thoughts. A nervous wit, she has a head full of double-entendres and speaks in odd, unexpected, tangential locutions like Emily Watson in Alan Rudolph’s Trixie. Nothing she says is ever self-deprecating or campy; she’s always shockingly sincere.Yet her optimism is the opposite of Scott’s sad fury. The clear precedent for this great characterization is Giulietta Masina’s unforgettable role in Fellini’s 1956 Nights of Cabiria.
Leigh doesn’t evoke Fellini’s Catholicism, yet the emotional fount of Happy-Go-Lucky is quite similar. Like Cabiria, Poppy smiles through life’s miseries; she’s not a victim.
When an incomprehensible homeless man growls, “You know?” she responds, “Yes!” That compassionate reply marks Leigh’s political advance (pace Fellini). Plus, it verbalizes the affirmation of Poppy’s favorite pastime: the trampoline—which for a nonreligious artist like Leigh perfectly symbolizes that joy is grace.
It is a rare blessing to have movies like Happy-Go-Lucky and Rachel Getting Married arrive back to back.These films suggest that life goes beyond partisan politics and that politics is what happens moment to moment, day by day. Both are authentically social visions, and they’re sure to rank as the best films this year.
> Happy-Go-Lucky
Directed by Mike Leigh Running Time: 118 min.
