I love it when I am completely surprised by a book or a movie. For all the talk about how important a proper script is to a good movie, once in a while, a movie comes along where, try as I might, it becomes difficult for me to describe the ’story’, but the characters become etched in my memory.
I was waiting for my flight at the Chicago airport. I had 4 hours to kill and I thought I would make best use of my time by watching a movie.The last movie I had seen a week ago was a movie called ‘Goodbye Solo’ by Ramin Bahrani. This was a fairly intense film about the bonding between 2 men who are complete opposites. I chose a movie called ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’ by British maverick director Mike Leigh, who had been praised to high heavens by film critic Roger Ebert in more than one post on his blog.
The movie cannot be described in simple terms, since there is no real plot to speak of. It is about a hopelessly optimistic and cheerful Pauline ‘Poppy’ Cross and the people around her. The film is a series of vignettes in Poppy’s life. I am not going to talk about the plot of the movie here, as Wikipedia can do it better than me.
Poppy can be termed weird by some standards. It is difficult to imagine a person who can smile at every single thing in life, who can crack jokes even while lying on the hospital bed, who can find rude people funny etc. Sally Hawkins, who plays Poppy, however manages to make the character real and strangely relatable! She apparently won the Golden Globe award for best actress for her role and she deserves every ounce of it (provided awards can be measured in ounces!!)!
In the initial few scenes, I was only thinking that Poppy was mildly annoying and could understand why some people would find her insufferable. However her character grew on me the more I understood the character. Some of her actions are really funny but very often, she surprised me with her keen sense of empathy towards her fellow human beings. Poppy’s character seemed much more aware and sensitive about the sufferings of her fellow beings than the supposedly serious characters in the movie, who keep chiding her for being frivolous.
In one of the most poignant scenes I have ever seen in a movie, Poppy has a conversation with a vagrant one night while wandering around the city. This scene has to be seen to be appreciated. The insight that Poppy seems to have into people’s hearts and minds provides for the most emotionally touching moments in the movie.
I loved the track where Poppy inadvertently provoked her driving instructor Scott, who is perpetually angry and is a complete contrast to Poppy. Their interactions are in equal parts funny and potentially explosive. I was expecting Scott to physically assault Poppy any time, but the culmination of their relationship was wonderfully subtle and heartbreaking.
There is a track where Poppy takes flamenco lessons with another teacher in her class. This provides a beautiful and gut-wrenching scene involving the supposedly icy-cold flamenco instructor breaking down in front of the class quite unexpectedly.
The beauty of the movie lies in the fact that nothing dramatic happens to the characters at the end of the movie. Poppy’s friend Zoe does tell her to be less nice and she says so out of love and concern for her friend. However people cannot change their basic nature easily and Poppy ignores the advice too.
I have been saying this for a few months now. There is so much negativity surrounding us that I find it difficult to breathe at times. I feel ashamed of myself every time I read about the latest scams or Wikileaks revelations, for being a silent spectator of all these things, although I can not do anything about it. Watching ‘Happy go lucky’ I was wondering if such people really existed and if they do, will I be able to meet one such person. It requires a core of steel to be able to keep up a genuine smile at all times these days and I wish for my sake at least that such ‘Sunshine’ people exist.
