OVP: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Film: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Stars: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Andrea Riseborough, Sinead Matthews
Director: Mike Leigh
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Certain directors have their own signatures, whether it be a wink to themselves (Hitchcock), a series of actors that consistently show up in films (Bergman, Allen, Scorsese), or just a specific genre they tend to work in (Fellini, Chaplin).  Overall, though, rarely do they play with form and story quite in the way that Mike Leigh does and end up with a surprisingly moving result.  Mike Leigh is, in my opinion, the director who best knows how to tell a story in a way you didn't expect, at least amongst working directors today.  His films always start in one direction, and like life, end up in a different corner of the universe as a result.  This is probably why, despite his films having an improvisational nature, they consistently land nominations at the Oscars for writing.  In a world with "twist endings" Mike Leigh's film stand apart because they truly could end happily or miserably for a specific character and you have no idea whom it will be until the film's final scenes.

(Spoilers Ahead)  This is certainly true of Happy-Go-Lucky, the film that turned Sally Hawkins into a household name amongst award aficionados (she won basically every trophy you can think of short of an Oscar nod, which she had to wait five years for with Blue Jasmine).  Her Poppy is not someone that you can easily define.  At first you think she's simply a sprite, someone who doesn't give a hoot about anything except having a good time and marching to the beat of her own drum.  She's the sort of person you think in theory you want to be and be friends with, but are aware that if you actually interacted with them their sunny disposition would start to grate.  In almost any other film, except for a Mike Leigh film, she would be taught that you need to come down a peg-or-two, cruelly joining the real world, but this (one of many surprises in the film) is not Poppy's fate.  The woman who opens the film with a stolen bicycle is bound-and-determined to have the life she wants to live, being blissful as often as possible despite being surrounded with detractors like her sister (who seems miserable) and her driving instructor (played by Eddie Marsan, who also is miserable).

The film follows Poppy through several months of her life and we learn she's more than just non-pragmatic boots and random nights out dancing.  We see, in fact, that she's just a genuinely good person who has a wonderful loyalty to her best friend and is quite strong at her job.  Poppy, despite what we've been taught at the movies about frivolous-seeming people, has a good life.  She's someone who recognizes, for example, that one of her students is being abused and finds help for the pupil in the form of a handsome therapist, who ends up being her boyfriend by the film's end, when she gets pretty much everything we all want out of life: fulfilling job, nice partner, great friends, and pleasurable leisure time.  It's a role that Hawkins has to truly toe-the-line with because the scenery-chewing is just waiting there, ready for the biting, but she holds back and keeps her grounded as a real person.

The same can be said for her driving instructor Scott, who is someone that clearly has received the short end of the stick in life.  Paranoid, racist, and consistently berating Poppy and his students, Eddie Marsan makes him extremely believable as a human being, but unlike every other director, once again we're thrown for a loop.  Instead of a comeuppance or a change-of-heart, Scott gets continued loneliness.  He confesses his amorous feelings toward Poppy after nearly killing her in a driving lesson, which she receives kindly but realizes that he's not someone she's going to be able to save, and dismisses him from her life.  It's a cruel, very heightened scene in a film that's far breezier than that climax would admit (to the point where it almost feels forced), but Leigh is so good at keeping reality there that it just works.

The best parts about Leigh's films, and the thing that distinguishes them in a way few other directors have, is that his trademark is on the emotional haves and have nots of the world.  Yes, like other directors he works with specific actors and frequently works in similar genres, but he is always focused on the cruelty of life and the way we pursue happiness in the same way we pursue money or sex, but happiness is a far more fickle mistress than either of those two other end goals.  His characters frequently have the same actions in all of their films as the protagonists, but in the end they get different results, which is true of life but very rarely true of the movies.  No one frames "pathetic" characters quite like Leigh can.  Think of someone like Marsan's Scott or Lesley Manville in Another Year (still my favorite of his films) or Dorothy Atkinson in Mr. Turner.  These are people who suffer from mental illness or from low self-esteem or an unworthy station in life-they are not generally bad people.  But they are people you skip inviting to parties or pity without trying to help or try to move past when you're having a conversation.  They are the sorts of people life forgets about, and whom we would consider pathetic.  The cinema is usually exceedingly kind to these people, giving them an unlikely best mate or an unorthodox but kind love interest.  It doesn't, however, mimic real life when these people just keep existing, even if we have lost our interest in them.  Mike Leigh does that in his films, which is why his endings always crackle and buzz-you don't know who will end up getting hope and who will have it extinguished.

Overall, then, while I never quite fell into the film the way I did Another Year, the movie is highly recommendable, and I look forward to seeing it compete against Milk and WALL-E in a couple of weeks when we start in on 2008's OVP.  In the meantime, let's discuss this film-what do you think of the bitterness of Mike Leigh: are you a fan such as I or do you find it too depressing?  Share in the comments!