In 1960 Disney Studios adapted a well-known children's novel by Eleanor H. Porter into a film by the same name: Pollyanna. The character, a young orphan girl who finds the good in every situation, no matter how dire, became cultural shorthand for naive optimism. Calling someone a Pollyanna is less a compliment about that person's positive disposition than it is a critique of how out of touch from the real world the person is.
Porter's character has resurfaced and been reinvented throughout the years. In Mike Leigh's latest film, Happy Go Lucky, some have wondered if Pollyanna has been spotted again. This time she is Poppy, a schoolteacher in North London. From the first scene the comparison is understandable. After repeated cheerful attempts at small talk with a grumpy bookstore clerk, Polly walks outside to find her bike has been stolen. Through her smiling reaction to this loss ("I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye"), the film quickly reveals Poppy's abnormal way of interpreting her life.
As something of a coming of age story, Happy Go Lucky provides plenty of opportunities for Poppy's unique personality to respond to the film's other characters. Each of these friends is transitioning into early adulthood and experiencing the accompanying realities of loneliness and misplaced expectations. Poppy, too, encounters these realities. Unlike the Pollyanna character she feels and is troubled by life's unfairness, but unlike her friends she interprets these injustices differently.
Happy Go Lucky wonders whether it is possible to still believe in something indispensably good. Given the complex problems of our day we rightly worry this question may lead to a detached and useless Pollyanna-ism. Superbly acted by Sally Hawkins, Poppy provides a compelling and humorous antidote to this fear. Director Mike Leigh invites us to imagine a way of living that is rooted in reality's fullness: the ugly and the beautiful, the abusive and the redemptive, the isolated and the intimate. In other words, Happy Go Lucky illuminates the differences between the naïve optimism of Pollyanna and the bold hope of Poppy.
Happy Go Lucky Trailer:
