Poetics of the Happy Ending in Mike Leigh’s Films
Poetics of the Happy Ending in Mike Leigh’s Films

Summary/Abstract: While the most recent cinema is about surprising us with strange formal solutions, whose finale is intended to completely confuse and outsmart us, Mike Leigh makes films which surprise us with their “typicality”, at the same time (paradoxically) leading to finales that we may not expect. Among researchers on melodrama, there are voices clearly assessing happy endings negatively. It is pointed out that a happy ending oft en looks as if it were “tacked on” and artificial, ignoring the overall plot rather than being integral to the rest of the film. In the case of Mike Leigh’s films, the situation looks (ostensibly) similarly. Leigh oft en leads the viewer through the dramatic lives of his characters, and watches the process of families’ lives being ruined, one aft er another, only to finally make them rise like a phoenix from the ashes. It may be stated that Leigh’s films in a somewhat artificial way take advantage of the happy ending. Th is artificiality, however, is not about a banal or ridiculous ending, but about one we have not been prepared for by the director.

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