So Yong Kim at the Women with Vision Festival at Walker

Treeless Mountain, So Yong Kim’s second feature film is back in Minneapolis. The film screened this past March in the Walker Cinema as a part of the Women With Vision series and is now being released nationwide. The Landmark Cinema (Edina) will be screening Treeless Mountain beginning on Friday July 17^th. I strongly encourage anyone who missed the March screening to attend the film or even those who attended to see it again.

The New York Times and critics alike have praised the movie since its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. From the unobtrusive camera , to the child-non-actors, Treeless Mountain is wistfully captivating, telling a story reflecting the director’s memories of growing up in Korea.

“Ms. Kim, her camera hovering gently and unobtrusively around the girls as they play, quarrel and daydream, turns their intimate moments into a quiet, poignant drama of abandonment and resilience.”—A.O. Scott, New York Times

“Rarely has a child’s POV been as evocatively emulated as it is in So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain, a work of tremendous poise and poignancy that assumes and articulates the perspective and emotional tenor of its two juvenile protagonists.”—Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

In March, So Yong was in attendance to introduce the film and answer a few questions from the audience post screening.  You can find the audio files from this conversation along with a previous blog post about the film on the Walker website.

For more information about So Yong Kim & the film, visit the Oscilliscope website and the Landmark website for screening times.

William Klein's MR. FREEDOM

The multifaceted artist William Klein is everything but a conformist. He is in fact its antithesis, making the most of each opportunity he has to question all conventions, be it in the world of photography or film. He craves the eccentric and out of the ordinary, he explores behind the scenes and brings to light the absurd, the forgotten and the rejected. He seeks not to please but rather to provoke; with wit and humor he reveals what others choose to ignore.

Just after World War II, Klein, the 18-year-old Jewish New Yorker was sent to Germany to do his military service. Two years later he went to Paris, where he met the love of his life and future collaborator, Jeanne Florin. He studied painting with Fernand Léger, but soon began his photographic career shooting fashion photos for Vogue (New York) magazine and then moving to street photography. His first book, New York (Life Is Good & Good for You in New York: Trance Witness Revels) changed the course of photography. His innovative choice of subject matter and use of wide-angle lenses, out-of-focus elements, and grainy film were criticized at the time but soon earned him international recognition.

In 1958, encouraged by his friends Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, Klein began his filmmaking adventure with the short Broadway by Light. With Times Square as the stage and the neon signs as ready-mades, Klein created an exquisite collage of words, lights, and abstract images that was considered to be the first Pop movie.

With the swinging sixties came Klein’s first feature film, the luscious Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (1966), a satire on the extravagance and superficiality of the media and the fashion world. With a truly unique style, Klein cunningly cuts from one genre to another, from fiction to false documentary, passing through animation, musical comedy, and even a bit of cinéma verité.

As Klein approached his forties, the war in Vietnam was at its peak and he became overtly political. In 1967 he joined with Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Claude Lelouch, Joris Ivens, and Chris Marker to make the film Loin du Vietnam, a direct attack on U.S. foreign policy.

Long before comic book characters became a trend in film, Klein created Mr. Freedom (1968), which features a superhero who incarnates the United States’ God-like attitude toward the world. This hilarious farce offers an unmerciful critique of the American government as well as other political doctrines such as Maoism and Stalinism. Initially banned in France, it presents a harmonious and yet disturbing explosion of color, violence, and humor.

During the late 1960s, Klein continued to reveal the cracks in the American dream and focused on the general world disillusionment of that era through such films as Grand soirs et petits matins (1968-1978), Festival Panafricain d’Alger (1969), and Eldridge Cleaver, Black Panther (1970). In the latter, Klein portrayed the revolutionary and polemic Eldridge Cleaver who, wanted in the United States, had fled to Algeria in exile. Here we see two of Klein’s traits as a filmmaker: his talent for getting close to his subjects, and his ability to go where others have not. Klein has a special interest in turning his camera toward the outcasts of his time and adopting this challenging and provocative position from which to see the world.

In 1974 Klein completed the magnificent Muhammad Ali the Greatest (1964-74), his most renowned documentary. Intended to demonstrate “the polarization of good and evil in America around a heavyweight championship fight,” the film is much more than just a portrait of the controversial Ali; it also includes a valuable interview with Malcolm X only 10 days before he was assassinated. Unconventional in its narrative with masterful editing — quick and dynamic — the camera smooth and yet alert floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

Klein’s third narrative feature uses a stylistic approach influenced by Mondrian, with a minimalist setting, to tell its tale of Le Couple Témoin (1976), a movie ahead of its time about a model couple involved in a “Big Brother” government experiment. As we witness the ups and downs in the relationship between Claudine and Jean Michel, who remained caged and under constant surveillance, we are forced to wonder about government and state control masked under the promise of the ideal society.

His filmography continues with Hollywood, California: A Loser’s Opera (1977), The Little Richard Story (1980), The French (1981), In & Out of Fashion (1994), among others. At the turn of the century Klein filmed Messiah (2000). Somewhere between heaven and hell, Handel’s haunting music is performed by inmates in a Texan prison; a gay choir in Times Square; a group of policemen; a gospel choir; and the best soloists of the time. In Messiah we experience beauty and sadness as we witness the absurd and cruel contradictions of mankind.

Throughout his career Klein has remained an independent artist. He expresses his thoughts freely, and he does not put up with bullshit. In my opinion, William Klein is a true artist, one who creates out of need and not for recognition, an artist who sought his own voice far from the mainstream. Somewhat misunderstood and not to everyone’s liking, he has accomplished the Dadaist objective stated by Hugo Ball, “For us, art is not an end in itself … but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in.” The magic of his films is that they not only portrayed their time but also foresaw the truths of the future. Yes, indeed, Klein’s films are alive and kicking!

In a meaty, 5,000-word feature in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, critic A.O. Scott brought together a number of recent American independent films under the rubric “neo-neo realism,” proposing that they might serve as an answer to the question that “seems to arise almost automatically in times of crisis” – that is, “What kind of movies do we need now?”

Besides provoking an immediate and rather, uh, spirited counter-critique from The New Yorker’s Richard Brody – a critical clash covered on Indiewire here – it turns out that you may have recently seen – or soon will see – many of the films Scott thinks we need now, right here at the Walker. Lance Hammer’s Ballast premiered here last fall; and the “luminous, poignant” Treeless Mountain by So Yong Kim, just a few weeks ago. Coming up are Tulpan May 8-10 and a mini-retrospective Under the Radar: The Films of Ramin Bahrani; Bahrani’s films Man Push Cart, Chop Shop, and the new Goodbye Solo are a focus of Scott’s feature.

The gist of Brody’s problem with Scott’s analysis – and with cinematic realism in general, be it the neo-realism of post WWII Italy or the neo-neo genre coined by Scott, is that “the willful rejection of complexity and ambiguity; a sympathy for ciphers based on their social position and reinforced by the downbeat warmth of the performers.”

Seems like a pretty harsh assessment, but you can read his full argument yourself – and then (wait for it!) turn to Scott’s own response to Brody on the New York Times’ Carpetbagger blog, observing, among other things, that he was not attempting to define “a style or a school or a movement, but rather a cinematic ethic that has surfaced in different forms in different nations at different moments and that now seems to be flowering in some precincts of American independent cinema.”

Of course, each critic’s argument is much more complicated than what is conveyed here. But no matter which side you might take, we’re just pleased to be screening so many films that have become a part of this kind of debate, which takes place all too seldom these days.

On a related note: As part of his retrospective here, Bahrani is teaching a master class on next Friday, April 3. Whether you’re attending it or not (or for that matter, whether you’re a filmmaker or not) his just-posted Indiewire article dissecting the opening scene from his new film Goodbye Solo is invaluable-an insightful and detailed look into the art of filmmaking.

Recently I made a joke in passing that the only way you know that either a film or filmmaker is great is if Manohla Dargis of the New York Times’ gives her stamp of approval. Looking back on this joke (which was neither funny or really joke at all) I think subconsciously I was on to something. It seems after further investigation, that each artist, each film Manohla writes highly about indeed stands out and fails to disappoint.

Pat O’Neill is no exception.

In November of 2004, Dargis wrote a piece following his opening at the Rosamund Felsen gallery in California.The article titled, In the Studios’ Shadow, An Avant-Garde Eye, a pointed essay that juxtaposes his “studio life” with his personal career. Doting him a “filmmaker who has brushed conceptual elbows with such radically different personalities as the avant-garde pioneer Maya Deren and that consummate commercial moviemaker George Lucas ,” Dargis captures the range O’Neill has that many don’t.

At UCLA, O’Neill started to make films as a graduate student of photography and design. Soon after he learned and started to use optical printing techniques to garner multiple exposures. It was his understanding of optical printing that led him to found Lookout Mountain Films and later create visual effects for Hollywood features including George Lucas’ The Empire Strikes Back.

But for O’Neill film is and was not a means to an end in the lucrative sense – film was a personal expression that explored visuals and technique, sight and sound. He is thoughtful in his construction, thoughtful of how the sound and picture of a film can capture, engulf, disturb, move and tickle the viewer. Dargis summarized a clip from O’Neill’s short Last of the Persimmons that articulates how seemingly obscure his image and sound construction can be, yet when put together become perfection :

“As the colors shift and deepen, turning the luridly red persimmon brown, Mr. O’Neill adds some pulsing animated shapes that look like doughnuts one second, flowers the next, and seem very much to be dancing to the accompanying song, “Is It Love?,” by T.Rex”

In looking at his work, clearly it is his multi-disciplinary background that makes his films stand out. He is not just a photographer, not simply a designer or filmmaker. He is a conscious amalgamation of all his mediums.

O’Neill will be in the Walker Cinema tomorrow evening , Thursday February 19, to introduce his films Trouble in the Image, Sidewinder’s Delta, and Horizontal Boundaries for the third installation of Tribute to Experimentation, Expanding the Frame. With Horizontal Boundaries, O’Neill interprets the landscapes of Los Angeles and enhances this multilayered portrait with a new soundtrack and a dazzling 35mm print. In Sidewinder’s Delta, a title from the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Film and Video Study Collection, optical printing is used to combine original material with images drawn from found films. Rounding out the program is Trouble in the Image, a multilayered work that took more than a decade to complete.

Each of these three films poignantly uses the respected medium to convey something, anything, and perhaps everything to the viewer.

Some incredible and unique things happen in the twin cities, and the annual Sound Unseen film festival is among my favorites. A film festival dedicated to music movies (not to be confused with musicals) is right up my alley. The 9th iteration of the festival got underway last night with a pair of screenings at the Riverview Theater. Tonight, the festival moves over to the St. Anthony Main theater, and there’s no shortage of excellent programming.

Here are a few recommendations:

Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake - I’ve been waiting for this one for quite a while, and finally caught up with it last night. It’s showing again this evening. It’s basically a SY concert film interspresed with interviews with the band. The project came out of a program in Reno, Nevada called Project Moonshine that basically teaches teens how to make moves. Sleeping Nights Awake was entirely shot by the kids in the program, and they put together a pretty great film. It caught up with the band on the Rather Ripped tour, and they sound fantastic. There’s an amazing performance of “Shaking Hell” that shouldn’t be missed.

Sigur Ros: Heima - If you’re a fan of the band, this one is a bit of a no-brainer. This documentary follows the band on a tour of their native Iceland in which they played free shows as a thank you to their homeland and fans. They set up in deserted factories, expansive fields, and
virtually anywhere they could be had. The music is sublime, and the film paints a beautiful portrait of the Iceland that roots Sigur Ros’ sound. It’s as much about the landscape as the music. It’s incredibly well done from all perspectives.

Low: You May Need a Murderer - I think I’ve seen three different docs on Low at this point, and this one is clearly the best. Low’s music is there, but the real interest here is that the filmmaker caught the normally introverted Alan Sparhawk at his most open and generous. It gets into the core of what Low’s music comes out of. Sparhawk offers insight to own battles with mental illness and addiction, and goes deeper into their family life and religion. Its honesty is refreshing and goes to really heartbreaking places.

Dead Man – This one’s not necessarily a music film, but the movie is forever connected to the score by Neil Young, thus fits in very nicely with the festival. That said, who cares. Any reason to bring this film back to a cinema screen is fine with me. It’s easily my favortite Jarmusch film, and the experience of seeing it projected on a big screen from a 35mm print is unparalelled. Do not miss this chance.

Rust Never Sleeps – Following Dead Man, this is an excellent second half to a rare Neil Young double feature. I was able to preview this print, what might be the only 35mm print left of this film, with Sound Unseen director Rick Hansen, and it’s a treat. They don’t make concert films (or live records) like this anymore, and it’s a shame. It captures a full Neil Young show from a stop on his 1978 tour. The set is half solo acoustic and half electric with Crazy Horse and features a crew of dancing jawa stagehands.

There are a bunch of other great programs as well. The festival covers a wide musical spectrum and offers something for everyone. Check it out, and support one of the most unique and innovative film festivals around.

Boy (Shonen)Click here to view the embedded video.

Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari)Click here to view the embedded video.

The Sun’s Burial (Taiyo no hakaba)Click here to view the embedded video.

In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida)Click here to view the embedded video.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Furyo)Click here to view the embedded video.

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobo nikki)Click here to view the embedded video.

Violence At Noon (Hakuchu no torima)Click here to view the embedded video.

Mike Leigh on the set of Happy-Go-Lucky

Our Mike Leigh Regis Retrospective kicked off last week with Bleak Moments and High Hopes. This week brings us Life is Sweet, Naked, and the premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky. I’ve got some links to whet your appetite:

• Our trusty intern, Evan Cook, popped into work one day having put toghether a fantastic trailer for the Mike Leigh program. You can find it in the image bar at the top of the page.
• Tickets for the Regis Dialogue have sold out, but tickets remain for the premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky. Take a look at the trailer.
• indieWire posted an interview with Mr. Leigh this morning. If you haven’t had the chance to give it a read yet, take a look at Rob Nelson’s interview for this blog as well.

Easing the pressure somewhat is the virtual consensus that Ballast is a true work of art – you can read the critical hosannas in Variety , the New York Post (!), and the New York Times (be sure to check out the beautiful audio slide show that accompanies that review) – but Hammer is also getting considerable press coverage related to his distribution decision. Going the DIY route means signing on for a huge amount of work that normally would have been done by others (for a price, of course – not just in terms of dollars, but also creative control).

As Manohla Dargis wrote recently, also in the New York Times, “With the support of some publicists, Mr. Hammer and Mr. Raphael will attempt to do what usually takes an army of handlers and entire studio departments to pull off. Mr. Hammer is creating the poster artwork and making the trailer, and together they are booking mainstream theaters and also taking “ Ballast” around the country to universities, film clubs and art centers, just the way many independents have sought and found audiences for decades.”

In that same article, Dargis offers an excellent and concise history on the rise and decline of independent filmmaking since the 1980s; for her part, she doesn’t believe that the recent closings of a number of small film companies is necessarily a bad thing – not, at any rate, for “those who think films have worth beyond their box office returns” or for filmmakers whose “aesthetic sensibility and worldview are of no economic use and interest to the studios or to most audiences either.” Ballast seems to fit on both those counts.

Incidentally, the Times really seems to love this film, not just for itself, but for the larger story it tells about independent, highly personal filmmaking. It figures into this Times story from last summer about DIY distribution, which is geared more to the layperson, and this story from critic Dennis Lim, which traces the story of how Ballast came about – a long, circuitous process that involved an extensive road trip through the Mississippi Delta. Lim also notes that when it comes to techniques, the filmmaker took inspiration from Robert Bresson and Wong Kar-wai, as well as Mike Leigh, the subject of a Walker film retrospective, Mike Leigh: Moments, screening October 3 – 25, as well as a Regis dialogue on October 15.

In the article, Hammer also makes another connection, one worth considering while walking through galleries of Eero Saarinen’s work here and at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Having graduated from USC’s architecture school, he believes what he learned there prepared him for filmmaking – perhaps even better than film school would have. “ Architecture’s about having faith in something unformed,” he points out, “which you then have to manifest materially.”

(By the way, here’s a more in-depth, industry-oriented story about Hammer’s decision to self-distribute Ballast, from indiewire.)

Mike Leigh

Leigh’s summation of his work, given to me during a recent interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, is not just thoroughly authoritative–anything this director says is thoroughly authoritative–but conveniently timed. Throughout October, the Walker is showing all 10 of Leigh’s features, starting with Bleak Moments on Friday, and the event will bring the distinguished filmmaker to Minneapolis for the very first time, on October 15, for a Regis Dialogue with LA Weekly film critic Scott Foundas (whose brilliant handling of Milos Forman at the Walker some months back leaves no doubt that he’s perfect for this even more daunting task).

Leigh has a reputation–not unearned–for being dark, onscreen and off. And it’s that reputation, in part, that the director plays with in Happy-Go-Lucky (October 11 at 7:30 p.m.), which starts with a scene that’s almost magical in its joie de vivre, the camera tracking bicycle-peddling grade-school teacher Poppy (Sally Hawkins) through a candy-colored fantasia that just so happens to be London–not art-directed London or computer-generated London, but London. A committed realist, Leigh doesn’t fabricate. Which is to say there’s something right in the first minutes of the director’s typically groundbreaking new film that finds something real worth smiling about–a rare act these days, and one of which optimistic Poppy herself would approve.

Leigh and I talked for a half-hour or so about–among other things–optimism, subversion, the future for kids, and the true meaning of Poppy’s clothing.

Q: I find Happy-Go-Lucky, like many or all of your 10 features, to be a deeply philosophical work.

A: Good. Because it is [laughs].

Q: It’s an inquiry into what it takes to be happy and sustain it. But do you think that happiness can sometimes be a disease, too, like depression? Is there a fine line between the two?

A: Well, I think we need to deal with part of the premise of the question, because the film isn’t really about happiness. It’s about fulfillment. I don’t think fulfillment can be a disease. Maybe happiness can be a disease, I don’t know–even that sounds perverse. But certainly fulfillment is not a disease. Maybe the question should be, “Is it dangerous, this condition of delirious bliss, this state of being blind to realities?” In that case, the answer is “Yes.” But that’s got nothing to do with the film, because that’s not Poppy’s condition. Poppy is grounded, focused, sensible, intelligent, sympathetic, caring, motivated, committed professionally, and someone who cares for other people. She has a sense of humor, an exuberant spirit, and all the rest of it. There’s nothing dangerous in her condition at all–it’s positive and it’s healthy.

Q: Good. But you allow for a range of interpretation of the character and the work itself, yes?

A: Look, my films are not prescriptive or, in the crude sense, didactic. Are they philosophical? Yes. I invite you to respond as you will to a look at people who, hopefully, have been rendered in a three-dimensional way, like real people. And your response will be determined to a degree by how you are as an individual, whoever you are. So, yes, there’s a variety of interpretations. It is also true, on another level, that, because of the way I constructed the film in the initial stages, you could be forgiven for thinking possibly that this could be a young woman whom you may not want to spend two hours with.

Q: Yes.

A: But even that, I have to say, is all too easy. Because the first thing you see of her in the film is her riding through the city on her bike; the only thing that happens in that rather straightforward opening sequence is that you see her waving at people in a friendly manner. Then she goes into a bookstore, where the [employee] there is especially antisocial and catatonic–he’s got his head screwed up with his own problems. She deals with that guy with gentleness and humor. She gets her bicycle stolen, and she deals with that philosophically, too. Then you see her behaving in a kind of outrageous way with her girlfriends, just having been out for a night on the tiles, you know? And from there on, you see her being responsible and sensible–but funny as well. So really, she’s there to get to know. And that constituency–and there is one–that says, “I wanted to throttle her by the end of the film, I couldn’t stand her,” well, I just can’t get it, really. I don’t know where they were when all those things were happening in the film. I don’t know where their heads were. Or rather I do know where they were: Their heads were up their asses, basically.

Q: We’re talking about this character in psychological terms as well as philosophical terms, and I’m struck by her diagnosis in the film of Scott–her driving instructor–as being an only child. I’m very interested in that. How did that line originate?

A: She’s a teacher and she knows about kids; she thinks about kids all the time. She would have taught kids from big families and kids who are without siblings. Her instinct, which comes from that long experience, would lead her to that conclusion. You kind of understand from his reaction to what she says that [Scott] probably is an only child. So the line is just a way of opening that up. It comes organically out of her ability to be perceptive.

Q: Are there movie characters that you thought of in relation to…

A: Absolutely not [interrupting]. No. Some people have mentioned Holly Golightly [from Breakfast at Tiffany's]. But I don’t think about movie characters at all.

Q: So she’s modeled on real people then?

A: My job is to make things up. It’s what fiction-makers do. So Poppy is drawn from all kinds of sources, really–including none at all, you know? She’s drawn from my idea of something.

Q: While inventing this character, did you imagine how you would react if you literally bumped into her on the street?

A: Yes. I’d love to bump into her on the street. She’s someone I’d like to know. Oh, yeah. She’s the kind of person I like. I’d get on with her well. We’d get each other. Like Pygmalion and Galatea, really. She’s a gas.

Q: Poppy seems to gravitate most strongly to the social worker–they have a kindred connection around helping others, kids in particular.

A: They also fancy each other and they fuck each other, yeah. I can’t say it any clearer than that, really.

Q: Did any part of you want to show it more clearly?

A: Don’t know what you mean.

Q: You say “fuck,” so…

A: You mean did I want to have something in the film that isn’t there?

Q: Well…

A: Answer is no. Everything is just…

Q: Well said.

A: See, we don’t make films that other people interfere with. We make films far away from the nonsense of Hollywood. We make films with freedom. So this one is exactly as it should be. You don’t need to see any more than you see in the film, but it’s important that you see what you see.

Q: Bear with me for a second: Could you imagine having seen Happy-Go-Lucky in, say, 1973, just as you were starting to make films?

A: You mean could I have made this film in 1973?

Q: No, what I mean to ask is: If, by some crazy miracle, you were allowed to see your work from 35 years into the future…

A: Oh, I see.

Q: …how would you react to it?

A: Would I be watching it knowing that I had made it?

Q: Right! That’s the question–I suppose it hinges on that. Perhaps you could answer it either way?

A: Well, first of all, I have to say that this is a ridiculous avenue to traverse. But very well, I’ll go along.

Q: I could say one other thing.

A: Go on.

Q: Well, I think another way to ask the same question is: How do you personally–in the ways that matter to you most–measure the course of your progression as an artist?

A: That’s a more tangible question.

Q: Sure. But keep in mind the other question, perhaps, as you answer.

A: Well, the truth is, if I saw, in 1973, at the age of 30, Happy-Go-Lucky, and, having made only one movie before, I didn’t know it was a film by me, it would simply be a film that would blow me away. I would actually be very excited by it. I would be very influenced by it. I would be very taken with it. Now, on the other hand, if I was gazing into a crystal ball…but you don’t mean that, do you?

Q: I’m interested in either answer.

A: I don’t know. Your question really is about progression, yes?

Q: Yes. You took so many steps in between to arrive at Happy-Go-Lucky. And the retrospective marks each of those spots.

A: Yes.

Q: What if you had skipped those steps?

A: Okay. Are you familiar with Bleak Moments?

Q: Yes.

A: Okay, I’ll tell you the truth. What interests me is not so much the differences between the films, but the sibling relationship between them–the homogeneity, the similarities, if you will. Because actually, if you look at Bleak Moments and you look at Happy-Go-Lucky, you would find quite a lot that resonates beween them.

Q: And Naked, too. Maybe that’s what I was getting at in that question about whether happiness can in some cases be a disease, can be dangerous. These films that appear opposite–and these states of mind or mood that appear opposite–are maybe not as different as they appear.

A: Okay, sure. Yes. You could bring any of the films in. And in a way, that’s part of the answer to the question. On the other hand, part of the answer is about something else completely. Which is that I was 28 when I made Bleak Moments, and I was 64 last year when I made Happy-Go-Lucky. All of my progress as a filmmaker, my trajectory, can be identified in terms of a simple before-and-after: There are those films I made before I was a parent, and those films I made since becoming a parent.

Q: When did you become a parent?

A: I became a parent in 1978. Now, I do hope that at 65, my worldview and my experience of life inform what I do. So it’s not a question of Happy-Go-Lucky showing that, hooray, at last, he’s happy, he’s a happy old man, he’s made a cheerful movie. That’s rubbish. Because in fact, we haven’t seen what the next film is going to be.

Q: Indeed.

A: But I think there’s a more rounded view of people and things in Happy-Go-Lucky than there was in the films of 30 years ago. As an artist develops, his skills develop. And also, there’s another thing, too, which is rather mundane, I suppose, but it’s very important, and it’s this: Every time you make another piece of work, that piece of work claims territory that you’ve not been to before. So the territory left to explore diminishes. And that makes you more imaginative about where to go next.

Q: We’ve been talking about your personal life in relation to the art–at least in this idea of the films being distinct for having been made before or after you were a parent. So the other question is: To what extent did your decision to make this film at this time reflect the current sociopolitical climate–which many would characterize emphatically as not happy-go-lucky?

A: Totally. We’re living in really bad times, tough times. We have a great deal to be gloomy about. And we can sit around here being gloomy, yes. But while we’re doing that, people–not least among them teachers–are out there getting on with it. The act of teaching kids has to be, by definition, an act of optimism. Because it’s about cherishing the future, nurturing the future. What future? Now that’s another question. God knows what future. How old is your kid?

Q: He’s six.

A: Six! What sort of a world…I mean, how old are you?

Q: Forty.

A: Forty. What kind of world will your six-year-old be living in when he’s 40?

Q: I don’t know what he’ll inherit.

A: Yeah! Exactly. But we have to be positive. We have to get on with it. So that’s the answer to that one.

Q: Let’s switch gears a bit. How were Poppy’s costumes chosen? These are fantastic creations.

A: Everything she wears you could buy off the rack at prices that Poppy could afford last year in London–that’s the first thing. So there’s nothing phantasmagorical about them. Edith Head did not earn credit for Special Gowns Worn by Ms. Hawkins, you know? We’re very strict. Nobody wears anything that his or her character wouldn’t wear or couldn’t afford. And they’re also a function of Poppy’s taste–her sense of humor and sense of life. And, of course, it’s a movie! We’re being a little bit pious about it in this conversation, because the fact is: It’s a film! It’s an entertainment! I’m here to amuse and entertain you, to give you a good time, make you feel jolly! It’s my first widescreen film. Just before we started shooting, [cinematographer] Dick Pope went to a trade fair in London where Fuji announced this new [35mm] stock called Vivid, which accentuates bright primary colors. So we used that. And so it all comes together, it all coheres.

Q: I guess that’s the sense in which I’m encouraged to think and ask about other films, other film characters. The images in Happy-Go-Lucky really pop in a pure, kinetic kind of way, in terms of how the colors excite one’s eye. It makes me think about, say, Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, for instance.

A: Well, I hope that Happy-Go-Lucky is a more interesting film than that [laughs].

Q: I’d say it is, yeah–because of its complicated relationship to genre. I mean, if you want to see Happy-Go-Lucky as a movie, and to some extent you do…

A: It’s a movie, yeah.

Q: …then I think it’s a movie that investigates the inner workings of other movies, other genres–like the one that includes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

A: What I would say is that the film subverts that genre. What I do very often, in fact, is subvert genre.

Q: Indeed.

A: For example, Naked subverts film noir. In fact, nothing that happens in Naked has anything to do with film noir, but the general feel of it does. Topsy-Turvy absolutely subverts the costume film, the period film.

Q: And the musical, too, I would say.

A: Yeah. And Happy-Go-Lucky subverts. It’s interesting what you’re saying. You do have to talk about the movie as a movie. Because it is a movie. At least I think it’s a movie, anyway.

Q: I won’t disagree with you.

A: Yes.

Q: It’s a screwball comedy.

A: Yes it is, on a certain level. Except that if you said to people that Happy-Go-Lucky is a screwball comedy, you would be…

Q: Subversive?

A: Well, you would be not telling the truth. The film has screwball comedic elements in it, yes. But the truth of the matter is that the story of the film is a perfectly real series of events. And unlike a screwball comedy, the narrative is cumulative, not causal. It’s not all about the farcical messes that people get into. It’s just about what happens to people.

Q: To the extent that Happy-Go-Lucky, as you say, is designed to surprise and subvert, and that this is something you’ve done throughout your career, has that effort needed to change over time by dint of the fact that the world has come increasingly to know the films of Mike Leigh–enough to know that they should expect subversion?

A: Yeah, but I don’t think about that. I really don’t. I just think about what the film is about. One thing I could say, I suppose: Life is Sweet is followed by Naked, which is followed by Secrets and Lies and Career Girls, then Topsy-Turvy and All or Nothing, and then Vera Drake comes in. So there is a thing of doing something completely different than you did last time–deliberately doing what I think you’re not expecting. Happy-Go-Lucky has a pretty obvious element of distinction from what came before, from Vera Drake. So in that sense I think about these things, yes. Maybe that’s what you’re talking about. But ultimately, I just get into thinking about the movie is about. Within my genre, if you want to call it that, if you want to be pretentious about it, I do what I do, which is fairly limited, but within that I also vary the style of the films. But fundamentally, the films are all the same–they’re torn from the same cloth.

Q: Maybe there’s a sense in which the ideal viewer of Happy-Go-Lucky is one who has never seen a Mike Leigh movie–or at least doesn’t know that he or she has.

A: I don’t think that’s true. As a matter of fact, I think that would be ridiculous. I certainly think that people who have never seen a Mike Leigh film are more than welcome to see Happy-Go-Lucky. But the film certainly hasn’t been made for people who’ve seen my work or for people who haven’t seen my work. It has been made for people.

*Mike Leigh photo by Rob Nelson

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s documentary Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, which follows the great Senegalese musician through the contentious release of his latest album, Egypt, certainly fits this category. More than the filmmaking, Peter Sellers’ loving introduction and the sounds pouring out of Ndour’s heart convinced me this guy was about more than being one of the biggest musical sensations of our time. Indeed, Youssou Ndour begs us to fill our souls with light and hope, to face our friends and enemies with nothing but love, and to sing and dance with our whole beings. And, after the documentary and the live three song set Ndour shared, it became pretty much impossible to say no.

The series “Laughing ‘Til It Hurts,”composed of four slapstick shorts from the pinnacle (and end) of the silent era, provided another instance at Telluride where joy was unabashedly held up as something to be saught, captured, and savored at all costs. The series was curated by Paolo Cherchi Usai, a man who–from his position as director of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia to his wiry, hunched figure and sun-deprived aura to his beautiful indignation that silent film might EVER be considered primitive or “less than”–perfectly fits the mold of silent-film archivist and enthusiast. And great choices he made. The Cook (d. Roscoe Arbuckle, 1918), Should Men Walk Home (d. Leo McCarey, 1927), There It Is (d. Harold L Muller, 1928), and Pass the Gravy (d. Fred L. Guiol, 1928) kept the audience rolling (especially the ridiculous, squawking woman behind me) pretty much the whole time. As it turns out, fat dogs running up ladders and dinners made out of the neighbor’s prize-winning chicken are still unmanageably funny.

Above all, Mike Leigh’s new film Happy-Go-Lucky–which will show as part of the Walker’s Mike Leigh Regis Dialogue and retrospective this October–embodies the world view behind the slapstick-ers’ comedy and Youssou Ndour’s music. Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is an elementary school teacher who maintains a pretty serious high-on-life disposition and calls on those around her–a disgruntled but complicated driving instructor, an impassioned flamenco teacher, one feisty, sarcastic sister and one super square sister–to do the same. That we sometimes identify with these supporting characters’ impatience and frustration with Poppy and her perpetual joy, drives the point home. For when Poppy brings unharnessed energy into the suburban home of her married and pregnant sister, or goads the inner rage of her driving teacher, or wanders into desolate surroundings and shares a moment with a crazy person, we’re put on edge. We get annoyed or tense up in response to Poppy’s behavior. And just at that moment, it becomes crystal clear that through Poppy, Leigh is asking all of us cynics in the dark theater to give ourselves over to optimism, to see colors in all their vibrancy and life in all its opportunity, and to engage in the joke before all else. Once I realized Poppy and Leigh have a point, a really really good point, Poppy transformed from a naive and slightly annoying distraction into a mindful being exercising the courage to confront the world’s bleak moments with laughter and grace. Leigh and Hawkins serve up digestible portions of this life philosophy throughout the film; The wild giggling of best friends, Poppy’s mantras of you’ve got to make your own luck, haven’t you?, and Leigh’s choice of Kodak’s brand-spanking-new color-friendly film all work to shout, go ahead and live!