Responding to Frank’s critique of Happy-Go-Lucky.
First, all quotes from Mr. Jones (and yes, I know how reprehensible it is that I’m using Mr. Jones as a club):
People, People, People: For Christians, for Trinitarians, the core of our big story is personality, persons in communion, Father-Son-Holy Spirit. There is nothing more profound than Triune life, and Triune life is all about Persons in relation, Persons in loyalty and love and tension, striving and sacrificing for goals… In a Trinitarian universe people should arrest our attention far more than anything else.
Stuck in Pleasure: Art that just gives pleasure lies about a Trinitarian universe… Pleasure doesn’t teach as well as sorrow. To put it differently, entering a good story is primarily about learning to love some ugly person… Well-made character films offer us this angle. The story starts with someone with a huge flaw, some crazy obsession, some debilitating sin. We don’t like them. We wouldn’t want them as a friend. If we knew them in our day-to-day lives, we’d probably not go near them. A good film shows us how to love the unlovely, how to want to side with the ungodly. In short, insightful character films can try to show us people the way God might see them.
Triune Personality and Style: Christians are sometimes satisfied just to find some hint of sacrifice and redemption in a story… that’s nice but very superficial. Does the film show us interesting people? Does it reveal them in a Trinitarian universe overcoming ugliness and flaws, rising and transforming through the vanity of life?
Triune vs. Mardukian Style: In a Trinitarian world, violence doesn’t truly resolve things… To really enjoy the best films/plays, you have to be fascinated with people, fascinated with human life, how communities of persons work and fail, how we conflict and reconcile, how we’re unique and the same, how we change, mature, and grow.
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1. I don’t know how to argue that Poppy has depth. That she’s flawed is self-evident in the film. Ahh, I know: imagine how Hollywood would have treated such a character. (consider the big Hollywood ‘feel-good’ movie) A horrible tragedy would visit itself upon her that she has to overcome after questioning her cheerful outlook. She’d be a fool or a joke. But we don’t see either of those things. She doesn’t turn a blind eye to the bad in life; she confronts it directly.
2. Which scenes are gratuitous? Some scenes were pivotal: the dance instructor, the homeless man, and the family scene. But each scene contributes something new, right up until the end. You could easily construct a list of what each scene adds to her character.
3. And I still don’t know what to say to your third response… how many movies have you watched in the past few years that satisfy that criteria?
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