31st Mill Valley Film Festival: Interview with Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky)

At the Mill Valley Film Festival this year, Brit filmmaker Mike Leigh’s latest film became the centerpiece as part of a tribute to thesp Sally Hawkins whose life won’t be the same after the year-end award ceremonies have come and gone. As Leigh did previously with David Thewlis, Brenda Blethyn and Imelda Staunton, Happy-Go-Lucky is a great example of how an overlooked actor can take hold of a particular role and with the proper guidance, can make great strides, collect accolades and appreciation, and parlay this into further gut-wrenching, illuminating, heart-warming perfs.

Hawkins’s contagious character of Poppy will most likely connect with audiences and leave an impression much in the same way that archetypes like career launch pad roles such as Audrey Tautou in Amelie, Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures and Toni Collette in Muriel’s Wedding.

Leigh‘s idiosyncratic and much talked about filmmaking process has more often than not, been stunning in design and consistent in quality. One can always expect a heartfelt and genuine slice of life portrait from a Mike Leigh stamped picture and HGL is no different, except that it has a lighter spirit that is more optimistic in the light of a harsh realties that are best displayed in the emotionally distraught character portrayed by an equally brilliant perf from actor Eddie Marsan.

As with all of Leigh‘s films, the sheer pleasure is the journey of discovering the unique characters in unique settings. In this film the standout scene is when the teacher Poppy decides to spice up her life by enrolling in a weekly flamenco class. Without giving too much in detail away, it’s a magical scene that will tickle your fancy.

Mike Leigh

Yama Rahimi: When you commence working on a film like Happy-Go-Lucky, or for that matter any of your previous work, you’ve mentioned that you start without a screenplay but rather, a ‘feeling’, can you elaborate on this?
Mike Leigh: No I can’t elaborate on it. I have elaborated on it and the elaboration is called the film. The important thing is the film itself and you are asking about the earliest beginning of the film which you don’t ask normally filmmakers and you are asking me because the way I work. The truth to matter is that I can’t talk about it because I discover the film by making it.
 
YR: In your process of filmmaking, what’s the biggest challenge for you?
ML: Well obviously you can sit in your room by yourself and write a novel and all you got to do is to interact with your pen and paper or word processor and your imagination. Film involves a whole lot of practicalities and is collaboration with other people and therefore, is more sophisticated in some ways and more complex. Things have to be done on budget and on time. You have deal with the weather and so on.

YR: Would it be accurate to describe this film as a comedy?
ML: To describe it as comedy as opposed to a drama would be inaccurate. It’s a drama and all my films have been comic as well as dramatic. There’s a dark underside but a comic dimension as well. I mean the spirit of the film is uplifting. Having made the film I realized instinctively and intuitively what I have done is to make a film what I call anti-miserablist. It doesn’t mean harm to celebrate the possibilities of life even though we are in bad times and there’s much to lament. People like Poppy are positive. She’s a positive person. She’s a teacher and nurturing the kids and cherishing the future. She’s not an escapist or airhead. She’s focused, grounded and looks things in the eye.
 
YR: Do you think it’s possible to share your process of filmmaking with young filmmakers?
ML: I’m very involved with young filmmakers; a portion of my life is devoted to it. Apart from everything else I’m a chairman on the board of governors at the London Film School which is one of the oldest film schools in the world and it has an international body of students. I do share everything I can with young filmmakers. If you are actually specifically asking me whether my idiosyncratic and eccentric way of making films is something that’s young or other filmmaker should adopt, well that’s an open question because what I do is very personal but certainly anyone can draw inspiration from my work if they want or can. 

YR: As far as your relationship goes with your actors as you have worked with some of them previously, do you have a group of actors that usually work with?
ML: No, no we have got great actors in the UK and actually we have sixteen actors in this film and I worked with five of them before. If you work with someone that’s good and it works well, of course you come back to them obviously. I work with character actors who are versatile and people who can all sort of characters. It’s good to come back to people and branch out with other people and I’m very pragmatic about that.
 
YR: What other filmmakers do you admire?
ML: Of course I do. I love watching movies and I’m an avid movie-goer. I’m very disadvantaged frankly doing this press tour in the United States because I’m missing half of the London Film Festival which has great feast of films from around the world. I have been watching movies all of my life. I grew up on an exclusive diet of American and British movies till I was seventeen when I went to London and World Cinema exploded on my ears. My particular passion in my formative years were people like Renoir, the Nouvelle Vague guys, Ozu, Fellini and Satyajit Ray. I’m also very fond of Capra which this film has the spirit of.

Happy-Go-Lucky opens wide in theaters today.