DEAR Austin,
This post is for you.
Austin posted a while back about his latest movie infatuation—Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. Remarkably, after Austin rounded up a bunch of us to watch this movie with him, none of us liked it. At all. Even after learning that Rotten Tomatoes gives it a fresh rating of 93%.
Anyhow, I wanted to give Austin a couple of reasons why I didn’t like it, in the hopes that he might return with some comments and responses of his own. (Echoes of Slate. This should make Davey happy.)
First, in his original post Austin suggests that Poppy (the heroine) is a good guy character with depth. I’d like to disagree. Poppy certainly has “depth potential” (the fact that she’s always happy, the conundrum of such a crass person teaching pre-school), but the storyline never bothers to recognize any of her flaws. Driving Instructor Scott is doubtless a flawed person, but some of his instincts are right. Say, for example, when Poppy goofs around while driving and takes her hands off the wheel to flutter about. That’s wrong. That kind of “happiness” isn’t joyful. It’s foolish. Such a “happy-go-lucky” character offers many such tensions that could have been explored but weren’t.
Second, this movie could have easily been 30 minutes shorter. Gratuitous screen shots and dialogues abounded, serving only to communicate the lack of cohesive construction. (To put it another way, it felt like most of the conversation was throwaway, utter nonsense that served to reveal nothing—only fill time until one of Leigh’s philosophical insights had been properly setup. Sort of like a row of mud huts and shanties with a two-story house in the middle: guess what was supposed to look impressive?)
Third, I’m simply not convinced that Poppy had any foundation for her happiness. Blame my innate Schaeffer, but Poppy’s world has no meaning for happiness. She is shallow, merely trying to keep the peace (abundantly evident in two scenes: first, the bar scene with her two teaching friends where she never disagrees with either of them, despite the multiple contradictions; and second, in the family scene where her “responsible” sister is berating the rest of them). What does Poppy have to hang on to? One day, she too like Scott will blow up, and it won’t be pretty.
I will add to this a conversation D and I had about the movie the morning after. I should note, at the outset, that I reference Austin’s wife and one other young lady acquaintance of ours. Lest they get lumped in with the insufferable hero of Happy Go Lucky, I include the following qualification: I love both girls dearly and value them highly for their spunk and cheery dispositions. The similarities between my friends and Poppy Cross ultimately break down due to the inhuman orders of magnitude to which she takes otherwise lovely personality traits.
9:51:02 AM C: Eh,
9:51:05 AM C: we didn’t HATE it,
9:51:11 AM D: F did
9:51:14 AM C: but it was one of those garbage pomo movies,
9:51:18 AM D: lol
9:51:25 AM C: where you’re like “Ah! the protagonist is such a beautiful person,
9:51:33 AM C: if only they didn’t live in such an ugly world!”
9:51:46 AM D: Is that pomo?
9:51:49 AM C: Yeah.
9:52:07 AM C: Fundamental ontological conflict between character and universe,
9:52:10 AM C: I haven’t ironed it out,
9:52:15 AM C: but I think it’s a basic tenet of pomo literature.
9:52:32 AM C: Look no farther than Foer and books like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime,
9:52:38 AM C: Virgin Suicides,
9:52:40 AM C: stuff like that.
9:52:43 AM D: Hm
9:53:01 AM D: Sounds Dickensian.
9:53:03 AM C: It’s narrative tension,
9:53:04 AM C: you know,
9:53:09 AM C: with no metanarrative,
9:53:17 AM C: we can’t have principled conflict and resolution,
9:53:24 AM C: it all originates in the individual,
9:53:25 AM D: Gotcha
9:53:43 AM C: and they still haven’t figured out how to end a good pomo story without killing off the protagonist entirely,
9:53:53 AM C: it’s the only honest form of relief.
9:53:58 AM C: Anyways,
9:54:04 AM D: What about Stranger Than Fiction?
9:54:13 AM C: this movie ends with her rowing a boat and talking to her boyfriend,
9:54:26 AM C: with whom she has had serendipitous and unpassionate sex a single time.
9:54:31 AM C: It was stirring, really,
9:54:39 AM C: that phone conversation was.
9:55:18 AM D: hm?
9:55:22 AM D: phone?
9:55:24 AM C: Oh,
9:55:37 AM C: she talked to her new boyfriend on a cell phone while she rowed a boat.
9:55:46 AM D: Ah.
9:55:58 AM D: Why did Austin like it?
9:56:25 AM C: I dunno,
9:56:34 AM C: the girl was very bubbly and unflappable,
9:56:53 AM C: admirably chipper but ultimately irritatingly so,
9:57:07 AM D: Hm.
9:57:14 AM D: It’s gotten almost universally good reviews
9:57:22 AM D: Confusing
9:57:28 AM C: like a caricature of his wife or her sisters.
9:57:41 AM D: lol
9:57:44 AM C: Like Cat B without any self control.
9:57:50 AM C: There were some good moments,
9:57:55 AM C: don’t get me wrong,
9:58:25 AM C: pomoism is certainly capable of poignancy, but like existentialism, comes up sort on answers.
9:58:39 AM D: Mhm
9:58:41 AM C: I dunno,
9:58:54 AM C: the protagonist (Poppy Cross) made me feel really panicky,
9:59:11 AM C: she was the type of person that always saw beautiful things and got excited and distracted by them,
9:59:22 AM C: and pulled them, disorderly, into her orbit until they floated back out,
9:59:40 AM D: Hm.
9:59:43 AM C: so she was always wearing mismatched and flowing clothing, twisted stockings, and bracelets that jangled incessantly…
Frank, I can’t believe you just criticized the protagonist for not being a Christian.
Austin,
I wasn’t so much criticizing Poppy for not being a Christian, as I was calling her (or Mike Leigh?) a liar. Leigh gives her all this happiness and says, “Look, she does it all by her self, pure will!”
To which I say, “Not so! You, sir, lie.”
Austin,
I still want to see the movie. Hows about you give me a few reasons for why you liked it?
[...] Responding to Frank’s critique of Happy-Go-Lucky. [...]