Lucky
The late Harry Dean Stanton is at his brilliant best in this funny, tender drama about mortality.
Overview
The landscape of the late Harry Dean Stanton's face is home to a thousand stories. In Lucky, we're privy to a few. Directed by actor turned filmmaker John Carroll Lynch, this intimate character study revels in Stanton's crumpled gaze, rugged skin and weary expression, as though they're the only things in the world worth looking at. For 88 minutes, they might as well be.
Of course, there are other things that fill Lucky's frames. The movie starts with desert vistas that are almost entrancing as Stanton, with Lynch drawing a clear connection between their arid, weathered state and the film's central figure. A tortoise, named President Roosevelt, is spied ambling across hills and through cacti, slowly but surely going about its business. Townsfolk gather at the local diner during the day and at a bar each evening, shooting the breeze about life and love, and saying everything and nothing all at once. They're all connected to Stanton's protagonist within the narrative, but speak also to his mindset and his journey through life.
Still, while these elements – these images and characters – all have a part to play, there's also no ignoring that this thoughtful motion picture wouldn't have worked without Stanton in the titular role. That's partly because Lucky the film and Lucky the character can't really be separated. Story-wise, Lucky doesn't chart big developments or action-packed occurrences. Instead, it follows the charmingly cantankerous World War II veteran's routine, as he smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, watches game shows, does crosswords and exercises in his underwear. But when the nonagenarian suddenly faints, it becomes clear that his mortality lurks just around a looming corner.
Much like Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, this is a film that peers into a man's existence in order to show just how extraordinary the ordinary can be. Life, death, loneliness, friendship, hopes, regrets: they all ebb and flow through Lynch's film, sometimes mapped out in Lucky's expression, sometimes seeping through in his gruff chatter.
As much as the film is tied to its star, it's also peppered with extra flavour thanks to its supporting cast. Stanton's Alien co-star Tom Skerritt pops up as a fellow veteran, while Ron Livingston makes an appearance as an insurance salesman. Meanwhile, acclaimed director David Lynch — with whom the 91-year-old Stanton has collaborated on everything from Wild at Heart to The Straight Story to the recent third season of Twin Peaks — plays the owner of the aforementioned turtle, and brings vibrancy and warmth to every scene he's in.
It's not an easy job, shining a spotlight so soulfully on Stanton, while leaving room for others to have their moments too. But, in his first stint behind the lens, it's a job that John Carroll Lynch does masterfully. More than just a love letter to its leading man, Lucky is a melancholy ode to the inevitability that life goes on until it doesn't. Though conveyed calmly and with lashings of warm comedy, that's a potent message — both before Stanton passed away in September and now.
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