Half Past Noon

Apparently I’ve been “shamed.” Here is my response.

To begin, I’m not sure that offering random quotes from Mr Jones really proves anything, Austin. Even if you carefully selected them. I mean, they’re good quotes and everything, but what exactly did you have in mind? So far as I can tell, they don’t contradict anything that I’ve written. And even if they did, so what? Why should I care?

Yes, Poppy is very obviously flawed: she treats life as a lark. Which isn’t always a bad thing. After all, it’s not uncommon for Christians (especially the Reformed ilk) to treat life like some Victorian performance of Shakespeare. To put it more plainly, we’re often not very good at having fun. And yes, I’ll grant you that Poppy is aware that she doesn’t live in an innocent world. The encounters with Scott, her wound-up sister, and the homeless man all prove that. But I disagree that Leigh’s approach is in-and-of-itself better than normal Hollywood fare. Poppy needs to be tested. She needs to prove that her way of dealing with life is a good one: I honestly can’t see any other argument for this film. How else can it be a story?

Gratuitous scenes? Off the top of my head – the dual classroom scenes near the beginning (where we see shots of both Poppy’s and her flatmate’s classrooms, intermixed together); the shot of her superior Flamenco dancing in the school hallway; the scene where Poppy, her sisters, and others are walking near the ocean, and it ends with a five second shot of two unknown fat men. Did they reveal things? Well, possibly, but nothing that contributed to the overall story. Because a story is a collection of related events—events which all present a cohesive storyline (or arc if you’d rather) about a person. In these and other scenes, we’re really not sure where the film is going, because the film doesn’t really have a direction. Do you see one cohesive storyline? And before you try it, No, you can’t just say, “It’s all about how she responds to unfortunate events.” That’s a photo album, not a story.

Finally, the reason I think Mike Leigh is a liar is this: he tries to tell us that Poppy’s way of making things as happy as possible is an admirable way of dealing with the difficulties of life. But I just can’t believe that such power comes from within Poppy. Forget the fact that she’s coarse, that she contradicts herself without either knowing or caring. The biggest proof is simply that her actions are anything but constructive. Does Scott go away changed? Will her younger sister Susan grow up? Will her uptight sister learn to let people live their lives? Will Poppy learn when to be a lark and when to be serious?

No.

It’s all a lie.

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.

—

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?

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.

Happy-Go-Lucky is one of the most extraordinary movies I’ve seen this year. I want to do a longer review but I fear I will not have time. I have often heard from writers that it is easier to write a compelling bad guy than a good character with real depth. This movie has the latter, and you won’t be able to get her out of your head. Do yourself a favor and watch it. If you do, come back here and help me answer the questions the movie poses after the jump:

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