Sally Hawkins, left, with Alexis Zegerman, plays a spirited London schoolteacher in "Happy-Go-Lucky."
Buried near the bottom of my "Movies with Meaning" post on Monday, October 6, 2008 is a 5-star recommendation from critics Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat for this just-released movie . They said this was, "One of the best portraits of an enthusiastic person ever put on the screen."
The movie opens today, Friday, October 10, 2008 in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. I sure hope it makes its way to my neck of the woods sometime soon.
The NYT gives it a Top Critic's Pic. Kind of surprising, when even they say,
"Movies sometimes seem made for misery, for rivers of tears, stormy
skies and third-act woe. Happiness is for suckers and Disney Inc. But
happiness is a complicated, difficult matter..."
Read their review here. It's a long one-though. With all the depressing news surrounding us all, a movie about happiness opening in New York City seems like perfect timing.
One reader's enthusiastic comments:
Love Conquers, but not how you expect
Happy-Go-Lucky
is nothing short of a masterpiece: it manages the singularly difficult
trick of conveying the existential richness of happiness and its
consequences for others. Poppy is a complex, fully-rounded character
who also happens to be genuinely 'happy' from one moment to the next.
We see her in many different situations responding with empathy for
others because she herself is content with her lot; Leigh's 'lesson'
here (and he has often been a very didactic writer/director) is surely
one of love and compassion being the most sensible course in life -
everything good flows from it. I found this movie fairly overwhelming
at first blush - I admit it, I was completely suckered and deliriously
happy for days afterward - but a second viewing reveals more of its
contrivances. Nevertheless, the odd parallels of the schoolyard
bully/bullied adult/disturbed social outcast provide a sobering
counterpoint to the healthy behaviour of Poppy and her peers. More than
any contemporary movie I can recall, Happy-Go-Lucky is an unabashed
valentine to the human condition.
- grantc11
Written and directed by Mike Leigh; director of photography, Dick Pope; edited by Jim Clark;
music by Gary Yershon; production designer, Mike Tildesley; produced by
Simon Channing Williams; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 1
hour 58 minutes.
WITH: Sally Hawkins (Poppy), Eddie Marsan (Scott), Alexis
Zegerman (Zoe), Andrea Riseborough (Dawn), Sinéad Matthews (Alice),
Kate O’Flynn (Suzy), Sarah Niles (Tash), Sylvestra le Touzel (Heather),
Karina Fernandez (Flamenco Teacher) and Stanley Townsend (Tramp).
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