Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Poppy (in the green skirt) and her friends after a night on the town.
Happy-Go-Lucky is the story of Poppy Cross (Sally Hawkins), a primary schoolteacher, as she goes about her life for a few weeks. While at first Poppy seems to be a very silly person (she's constantly giggling and making ridiculous jokes, she wears lacy stockings and boots no matter what the occasion) as the film slowly shows her at work, with her friends and family, and most of all, with her unhappy driving instructor, it's revealed that Poppy is an extraordinarily strong person who just knows what to laugh at and what to take seriously.
I thought, after hearing about the film, that Poppy might be an insular person who lives her life blithely without letting the world penetrate. But she's not that simple, Poppy notices everything - one of her pupils hitting another, a homeless man on the street, her driving instructor's borderline insanity and deep misery - and she tries to help people when she can and when she can't she still has great sympathy for them.
I've met a lot of people like Poppy, who work as teachers, as civil servants, or in nonprofits and it's so nice to see a film acknowledge how great these people are. I read an interview where Mike Leigh described this film as a story about the people who still have enough hope in the world to teach children. There are several teachers in this film. Besides Poppy, there's her flatmate and best friend Zoe who is also a primary schoolteacher, Poppy's dramatic Flamenco dance instructor, and Scott (Eddie Marsan), her deeply unhappy driving instructor. All of them, in their way, are trying to help people be prepared to interact with the world. Even Scott, who's a nutter, wants to teach people to be responsible drivers. Unfortunately, Scott himself is largely ill-equipped to deal with the world and this interferes with his teaching methods.
In most Mike Leigh films there are the people that can deal with life (like Poppy) and the people who can't (like Scott). In Secrets and Lies, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn) is one of those who can't deal most of the time and her brother Maurice (Timothy Spall), says that she is the crazy way she is because she never "got enough love." That line can apply to many Mike Leigh characters throughout his films (and to most unhappy/crazy people in the real world, too).
I don't think that Happy-Go-Lucky is offering up the usual Oprah psycho-babble about how we control our own realities and destinies and if we're just positive then everything will be fine. How other people treat us, especially when we're children, affects our whole lives. Some people are born with more strikes against them than others. And although we don't know that much about Scott's history, we can guess that he hasn't had the greatest life. But at the same time, becoming paralyzed with anger and sadness is a choice.
I've always been one of those people who gets very upset about the world and the state of things. I asked a friend once about what to do about hopelessness and anger and she gave me the advice that Poppy basically lives in this movie - acknowledge problems in a constructive way. It's idiotic to ignore what's going on, but it's also stupid to mire yourself in misery. (Unfortunately, I still haven't found the trick, or the strength, to not get depressed and angry about world events.)
There's not really an easy answer in this film - the Poppys of this world aren't going to be able to save the Scotts, and the Scotts probably aren't going to dramatically change into happy people. However, Happy-Go-Lucky did make me want to be more like Poppy - a strong and positive force.