Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky is an unusual film that I have grown increasingly fond of in these several days after watching it.
You might call it a character study of a woman who may appear to some a "silly airhead" (I'm quoting a family member's critical reaction 20 minutes into the film), but who proves over the course of the story, I believe, to be a portrait of psychological health: a person with strong boundaries, who is non-judgmental, non-reactive, compassionate, courageous, appropriately assertive, modest, unpretentious and just happy being herself. She keeps balanced and cheerful in the face of all the dysfunctional cultural dynamics around her. Her good cheer is not merely passive and adaptive: even if in modest ways, at critical moments, she takes a stand and proactively confronts others around her. Childlike and playful whenever she can, but a mature and forceful adult when circumstances require.
Need I say what an important achievement this is in our world today? One of the actors, giving his commentary on the film, calls the main character a living example of the laughing Buddha. I think that captures it well.
A special something about the film quite intrigues me, and I'm not sure that I can articulate what it is. What's coming up for me is an analogy to the curious fact that our mainstream news media today is so rarely able to report "good news." If it bleeds, it leads, goes the saying about our contemporary journalism.
This characteristic of our news media reflects, I think, something deeply characteristic about our culture's almost addicted focus on problems, on "what's wrong," on everything unhealthy and pathological.
Why do we seem to find health so boring?
Why does happiness in our world seem like something always out of reach -- most likely something that we haven't saved up enough money to buy yet, or something enjoyed by other people who unjustly have more wealth, privilege and power than we. But happiness as something already present, free, available to all? Boring, or perhaps not believable.
Are we an eternally-disgruntled, blaming, protesting people, perversely finding some self-validation, perhaps even some joy, in the calamity that happens to others? Why do stories of murder, war and bad behavior by celebrities sell so many newspapers?
To our negatively-oriented spirits, the central character in Happy-Go-Lucky may seem to have nothing of interest to offer. No spiky textures to chafe our excitement.
Nothing spiky, that is, unless we find her continual laughter and good humor something quite annoying. The first thing out of many a viewer's mouth after watching this film may be something like this: "The main character laughed too much. She was really annoying. She got on my nerves. She acts like a child, not an adult." The attitude behind such a statements, I think, will bring relief to such viewers -- because they have found a way to insert the character back into the mainstream negative framework, thus making her unthreatening and easily dismissed.
Yet that annoying tapping on our nerves may represent a suppressed, inner, more happy self that's trying to emerge, if only we weren't so fearful of the consequences of letting ourselves be happy, of breaking from social norms, of being okay and compassionate with ourselves and with others -- much like the character in question. Have you considered this: Why does the word "childish" have such negative connotations in our language? Perhaps we disgruntled adults would do well to bring more of the spirit of children back into our lives.
Yet that annoying tapping on our nerves may represent a suppressed, inner, more happy self that's trying to emerge, if only we weren't so fearful of the consequences of letting ourselves be happy, of breaking from social norms, of being okay and compassionate with ourselves and with others -- much like the character in question. Have you considered this: Why does the word "childish" have such negative connotations in our language? Perhaps we disgruntled adults would do well to bring more of the spirit of children back into our lives.
The main character in Happy-Go-Lucky might be perceived as a sort of "nothing" from one perspective (I say, intending to invoke the ideal state of "nothingness" as preached by the Zen Buddhists). She is nothing but resilient and adaptive poise, a model of composure and unfailingly generous good humor relative to all that life brings her way.
The world as it is currently structured and oriented, I grant, is deeply unjust. How do we respond to that? Can justice grow out of a negative and bitter reaction to injustice? (At least one character in the film models such a response.) Yet flowers need healthy soil to grow. How can we become happy and spread health in an unjust world, among dysfunctional social relations, exploitative economics and corrupt politics, where assaults are coming at us constantly from all directions?
For I believe that we can. All the shadows we see in our lives are only visible because of a surplus of illuminating light. The given abundance supersedes all human-generated scarcity.
A few lines of poetry come into my mind:
"The light for all time shall outspeed the thunder crack."
- William Carlos Williams
"when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue
bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity ... "
- A. A. Ammons
Perhaps the emergence of such a film indicates that our culture is finding new models of psychic and spiritual health in the face of social dysfunction, new exemplars of the kind of individual poise we must learn to join together in building a new world.
