I have lots of movie and tv show rules and I am always having to go wash the dishes or make a phone call when characters behave in ways that make me uncomfortable. I stopped watching the Wire and Six Feet Under because they were too upsetting. Why do people treat each other this way, I wonder, jamming my fingers in my ears and hiding my face.
I figured I would be able to take about twenty minutes of this movie.
Instead, I was fascinated by Poppy (Sally Hawkins) while I waited for something terrible to happen to her. The viewer gets to know her slowly- she talks in cliches and glib Ricky Gervaisian rhymes, so it takes a while to see and hear how she interacts with the world. John Tarrant has written a buddhist take on the movie that I can agree with.
Interesting to me is how angry movies like this and Away We Go make reviewers. They find Poppy’s and John Krasinski’s goofy thoughtful niceness to be insufferable in a way they don’t hate on the idiot heroes of more straightforward situation comedies. Why is that? Is it boring to watch? What makes it boring?
I was surprised to read that some viewers found Poppy to be terribly self-absorbed – just the same criticism that Away We Go got. But Poppy is a great listener and has a close circle of family and friends, unlike most women comedic characters. I think there is room given each of the people she encounters and we see them differently because we see them through Poppy’s gaze. The warm interaction she has with a chiropractor after putting her back out gives the scene a dramatic potential that holds your attention despite nothing particularly happening.
