Say what you will about Mike Leigh ("miserablist," "tetchy," "past it"), his films, especially the more realistic, subtly-or-sparsely-plotted ones, nearly always reach into what sometimes feels like the vacuum between my mobile-phone toting, wi-fi addicted, materialist Western lungs and grabs hold in a way that leaves me wide awake, full of renewed emotional capacity and transformed.
Poppy, the protagonist in Happy-Go-Lucky, is a lot to deal with. Yes, she can be irritating, but in a country - and, arguably, hemisphere - full of pessimism, angst, self-doubt and mistrust, she is not a breath of fresh air so much as a splash of clean, ice-cold water in a deeply furrowed and rather dirty face. That's what people don't like about her: she dares to feel good about being alive as often as possible. She's almost too 'American' for the England she lives in, which may be the other reason people find her so bitterly annoying. Get over it.
Happy-Go-Lucky is not, like any good film, 'about' its protagonist. There is little in the way of full-on plot. There are just glimpses of character-led stories, which contribute to its painstaking realism. We don't get a big cymbal crash at the end; we don't get to loathe ourselves as senselessly as we normally might; and we don't get to go home with the satisfaction of believing in some cockeyed tenet as simple as 'smile, and it will get you through.' At least that's what I hope we don't get.
What I got was a firm and founded reminder of a recurring truth: you are the single largest contributor to your satisfaction with your life and accountable for your own happiness. As the characters say in the end, rowing a boat blissfully around a park lake on a summer Saturday afternoon,'being a grown up' is difficult, and 'being lucky' is rooted in attitude, not in some objective reality. There's nothing easy, resigned or fluffy about it.
Now, brush your teeth and go to bed. When you wake up in the morning, try to remember that old British maxim: "Keep calm and carry on." And it wouldn't hurt you to smile a little, either.
