Happy-Go-Lucky

Snubbed: Sally Hawkins 

Dir. Mike Leigh. 2008, U.S. 118 mins. 35mm. With Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Andrea Riseborough, Alexis Zegerman, Sinead Matthews. There has never been a movie protagonist quite like Sally Hawkins’s Poppy, a bouncy primary school teacher from North London who takes life’s challenges, pains, and pleasures with big doses of optimism and bonhomie. From this seemingly frictionless setup, writer-director Leigh, working his usual methods of creating his characters through extended months of rehearsals and improvisation, finds new paths towards dramatic conflict, pitting Poppy’s Pollyanna ways against the less cheerful folks around her. The brilliance of Hawkins’s performance is that she welcomes the viewer to try and understand her—whether we are confounded, judgmental, or sympathetic—without ever giving clues or reasons for the state of her psychology or the meaning of her ebullience; Happy-Go-Lucky is a film about our shared reality and perception. Ultimately the British unknown would be overlooked by the Academy that year for bigger American stars like Angelina Jolie, Anne Hathaway, and Meryl Streep, but Hawkins was the critical darling of the season, winning Best Actress awards at the Berlin Film Festival and the Golden Globes, and sweeping the critics’ awards, from the National Society of Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the Boston Society of Film Critics, and the New York Film Critics Circle.  

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.