The Rule Of Three: Its Mike Leigh

it's a bit grating but its heart is in the right place.

I don't take what Mike Leigh says at face value about Poppy being a happy character we ought to admire.

To me, she's yet another of his characters that's got trapped in a certain way of speaking and acting and the film is kind of about that.

I did find the (pre-bonk) pub scene with the social worker completely cringe-inducing.

the critics generally loved the movie, but the users comments in the "time out" review shows most people mainly hated it.

http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/85152/happy-go-lucky.html?cpage=1&ccat=11#top_comments_main

a paradox, so to speak

not for the first time,of course, but the first for a Leigh movie.

I agree with 'Harriet':

...I'd describe myself as a Mike Leigh fan but this movie, from the story (or lack of one) to the two dimensional characters (in some cases one dimensional), and the unrealistic dialogue and acting seemed by turns tediously shallow and surprisingly irritating. I initially tolerated Poppy's exaggerated, monotone chirpiness because I guessed that there lay something behind it, an event or neurosis from her past that it was a reaction to, which would be revealed and form the basis of the story and bring the film and Poppy to life but that was not to be....

i liked 'naked' a lot when i saw it, 'meantime' almost as much. haven't seen anything else.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ECTR9Q7QL.jpg

'everyone just say what you think'

i thought this was phenomenal! anyone who says poppy's chirpiness was unrealistic just hasn't met people like her - they really exist and yes they are trapped in it, to an extent, which you get glimpses of (for instance, when her co-worker's talking over a glass of wine about her daughter getting dumped - poppy is just incapable of summoning the sypathetic gravitas needed for these sorts of situations)

i thought it was a film about teaching - there was a dialectic between the methods of driving instructor, poppy, and the flamenco teacher - and even poppy's pregnant sister has a (very ineffective) style of "teaching"

I think the haters are too hung up on having poppy "explained" as if her happiness is some sort of psychosis or something. I though her character was laudable and the movie itself was swell.

the scene with the social worker and poppy and her friend and the kid in the classroom just broke my heart for some reason - just seeing these three people actually being good to this kid and really trying - i feel like you never usually see moments like that in movies unless there's some ulterior motive, like the kid has information that will lead to the killer

^^OTM

Saw this a coupla months ago, thoroughly enjoyed it.

i loved this as well. what made poppy's buoyancy really special, i thought, was that it wasn't the usual kind - floating over everything, skating over difficulties - but instead it allowed her to actually settle in with troubled people and, as it were, sink into their pain, untangling it (not without risk) like a knot.

and i loved the bright colors, the kooky threads, and the bicycle (sigh).

yeah the opening bike-riding scene was great, would marry her.

This was quite good. I particularly liked how Leigh presents Poppy's effervescence with some ambivalence -- it's truly a multi-sided thing. On one hand, it allows her to occasionally be very charming, and you also sense that it's a useful self-preservation technique, that she never lets anything affect her too deeply. On the other, her refusal to be serious for even a second is sometimes infuriating. The driving instructor is clearly an asshole with a whole host of issues of his own, but I did frequently sympathize with his frustration with her. Similarly, there's something laudable about her goodwill and her effort to make friends with strangers wherever she goes (from shopkeepers to bums), but she doesn't seem to understand that people often don't want the same and that this isn't necessarily an act of refusal or rejection as much as a desire for compartmentalization.

I thought this movie was terrible. Like watching Katharine Tate do a David Brent impression for two hours.

Really enjoyed it.

In a way it was like Mike Leigh's answer to the Charming Indie Comedy. It felt a little like watching a Miranda July-type character through a less sentimental lens (pun intended?), or through the eyes of other ordinary people instead of the delusions of the character herself. I liked the character comparisons between the sisters, although the film took some easy potshots at the pregnant suburban one (the husband who secretly wants to play video games was a bit cheap.)

The driving instructor was fantastic.

Some of the user comments on that time out review are so fucking dumb

The driving instructor was fantastic.

The performance, yeah. Too bad he had to have a fucking "arc."

Really liked the first half-hour the best (has he ever used 2.35 widescreen before?). Then, esp in the last reels, it indeed becomes "minor Leigh."

The arc of the whole thing was a bit frustrating -- "See, her approach to life turns out to be right because she saves the day when the driving instructor almost flips out and also she gets a handsome boyfriend. Yay!"

I think her approach to life seems as (in)valid as anyone else's throughout. I see the instructor's meltdown meant as more of a poke through her wall, but not a "reprimand" from Leigh. (really, the d.i. having a crush on Poppy -- lame, ditto the "66" stuff.)

Whatever. Sometimes great things happen to nice people!

Yeah, fair enough. Even in Mike Leigh movies!

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/bobbysixer/nutterinmay.jpg

Just watching this again. I'm beginning to come round to agreeing with one of the reviews that said Poppy's personality is a kind of mirror image of Johnny's psychosis in Naked

All or Nothing - yay or nay?

one of his worst, seriously.

i think he's rubbish, but even when i didn't, this one stood out as a stinker.

good, minor

All Or Nothing is probably my favourite of his heavierweight films. I don't see what's minor about it! Timothy Spall is wonderful, desperate in it.

heavyweight?

spall plays a feckless twat who has a heart attack, and there are some stoic women.

it's kind of depressing but what's heavyweight in it?

In the sense that they can be reduced to "x is a so-and-so and there are some ywomen" then fine, no family drama is heavyweight. To me, it spoke eloquently of the human condition, and that's all I meant.

Lightweight Mike Leigh = something like High Hopes, which is much broader and, in that case, not even very funny.

I was hoping to hear Alba's take on Happy-Go-Lucky...

i thought all or nothing was loathesome. there are no believable characters, to me. the characters have no depth but all the annoying leigh style acting tics. Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake are much better. Career girls is much much worse.

Yeah, All or Nothing, struck me as sort of oppressive and Leigh-by-numbers, but Career Girls is actually one of my favorites of his.

Thanks, all.

I just saw Happy-Go-Lucky and loved it! And I want to say that Tracer's comments about it above are really sharp and insightful.

I'm not sure how much of an arc the driving instructor had. He was broken at the beginning and remains broken at the end. So I find the very end not so much happy as bittersweet, if even that. As Tracer said, it's all about teaching: who can be taught? how much time should/can we devote to one broken individual? The "keep-on rowing" end seems facile until you recall that the abused boy and the driving instructor have to keep rowing too. And not to belabor the metaphor too much but you're forced to wonder how their rowing will impact others, perhaps in a deadly way, e.g., the instructor road rage or even the abused boy's bullying.

Also, at the very end, she's talking to the hunky social worker on her freakin' cell phone while her best friend is next to her in this supposedly idyllic nature setting. That ten-year-plus coalition starts to unravel as they row away and the camera pulls up into one of the "uplifting" crane shots. Not exactly a happy-go-lucky moment.

before i saw secrets and lies i figured i would hate it with every fiber of my being but it was so, so great

I was hoping to hear Alba's take on Happy-Go-Lucky...

― Bob Six, Wednesday, 21 January 2009 17:22 (2 months ago)

But he's evidently playing hard to get.

Oh well, perhaps Alba will give his views on 'Another Year'...

I thought it was a great - a return to the miserablism that is Leigh's natural metier after the mis-fire of Happy Go Lucky. Up there with his best films.

I think it's got a lot of depth. Still not sure what to make of the two led characters - Tom and Gerri- who seem initially warm but have a distinct edge. Lesley Manville is magnificent as Mary, the overly dependent friend, who becomes the centre of the film for me.

Lesley Manville at work - the best piece of acting I've seen this year so:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/audiosrc/movies/MOVIES_BREAK_Manville.jpg

What would you say their distinct edge is?

I'm not sure if Mike Leigh intended it so, but I think it's a horrible film, not just because we can weep at the "poor Mary" thing, but because it seemed so suggest, to me at least, that Tom and Gerri's happiness comes at the cost of others' misery. That stable families can make others feel worse. That happiness is almost a zero-sum game.

I liked Happy Go Lucky a lot (too) but it did seem like he was rather in the grip of an idea, the idea of Poppy.

Well, Gerri for example, seems to go into professional counsellor mode and deals with Mary with a certain coldness at the time when she most needs help.

Tom insensitively reminisces about his and Gerri's amazing holiday, practically a sabbatical in fact, at a moment when Mary and his brother are feeling particularly vulnerable.

(looks like Ruth - Mark Fowler's wife - from Eastenders is being channeled in that photo)

The only jarring note is that the son - Joe - reminded me so strongly of George Osbourne in appearance.

Yikes.

The New Yorker didn't like it either.

IIRC, Karina Longworth's #1 of 2010 is Trash Humpers. FWIW.

Another Year, the 10th feature-length British soap written and directed by Mike Leigh

not sure i wanna read a silly overly-pleased with itself zing in the very first line of a nyt review

never heard of a "nooner" before either

i do think that watching someone who is obviously in pain or in need of help and the movie ends and they are still in pain and still need help is kinda agonizing but also unfortunately true to life in a lot of people's cases.

Just back from watching Hard Truths at the cinema, brilliant stuff, but so bleak, you can just feel the final glimmer of hope drain away in that last scene. I was watching with my wife and wow Pansy is just like her mother (a woman I've lived with for about 5 years) - though my father in law is far from meek and tacit, so the actual family dynamic is quite different.

I saw it yesterday and have been meaning to post. Also thought it was brilliant.

It's bleak and tragic, but also very funny indeed. The showing I was in the whole audience was laughing out loud uncontrollably many times, especially in the first half or so (in particular the dinner scene and the whole sofa shop/supermarket/dentist/doctor portion).

The cinema was full of old white people and they didn't really laugh at all, even heard one of them remark on it not being funny. but yeah, the whole furniture shop bit! we were laughing at least.

I've just seen it and didn't like it much at all.

I'm slightly shocked to read above that the audience was "laughing out loud uncontrollably many times" because this film is as bleak as it can be, and I thought it was like being stuck with someone who is suffering from a serious mental illness and being unable to help them.

Certainly the audience were not laughing in the showing I went to (I didn't study the audience demographic, but it was at the Brixton Ritzy).

With regards to demographic, I didn't study the audience either, but I'm in Glasgow and saw it at the GFT, at a relatively quiet showing.

I wholeheartedly agree that it was bleak (and tragic, as mentioned), but there was dark humour there as well for me. I felt that was intentional.

I thought it was his best film since Happy-Go-Lucky and basically left nothing on the table about what it’s like to have someone like this in the family. There are definitely moments that can seem funny to outsiders but when you’re around this every single goddamn day, it’s a whole different story, and this film nails it. Even the last act is perfect - you can have sympathy for what makes someone become this way, but it doesn’t change the fact they still act horrendously and incessantly inflict damage on everyone close to them, and yes, people have their limits and will eventually hate them for it.

that was well-written and interesting but this: "Instead, I want a movie that, if it’s purporting to exist in the real world, at least has one mention ever that mental health care exists." there are millions of families where nobody ever mentions mental health care and never would. even if they thought of it they wouldn't mention it. i don't think its uncommon.

Are we to assume that Isaac Butler is familiar with mental health care provision on the NHS in the UK?

Im team #Peterloo