Lucky

source: Lucky

Harry Dean Stanton's second to last film role and the final film he saw to the end. A film about an old man, whose prodigious age is finally catching up with him in a small American town. The film certainly has a message to carry, something to say to its audience. Unfortunately, while the central themes - those of death, loneliness, regret and remembrance - are clear enough, nothing much gets said about them. Or rather, the film tries to have so many conversations happening at once that none of them gets enough focus to crystallize into something. The film is certainly pretty enough, though. The Arizona desert provides some profoundly beautiful landscapes and serves as a fitting background against talk about dying and having lived an imperfect life. Acting is also nice, the characters are suitably personable and feel like real people. It's just the script that keeps it all from being anything at all. It very much feels like I'm witnessing a commemorative final episode of a decades long TV series. Which is kind of fitting, admittedly, but at the same time it's not like I'm going to get anything from watching such an episode. I cannot help but feel like this is one of those films that I just don't get. The critics seem to love it, so apparently there is something to get. I just don't.

"Lucky" (2017 release; 90 min.) brings the story of an old man whom everyone calls Lucky. As the movie opens, we watch a turtle walk across the cactus landscape somewhere in the Southwest. We then get to know Lucky, as he gets ready for the day and does his daily exercises, all while smoking a cigarette. Other than a couple of milk cartons, his fridge is empty. Lucky gets breakfast at the small town's diner, where he does word puzzles. In the evening, Lucky meets up with his buddies at Elaine's, one of 2 bars in town. Howard tells of Mr. Roosevelt, his beloved turtle who has escaped. Next morning, as Lucky is starting his daily routine, he blanks out and falls. When he wakes up, he is in a doctor's office. What will become of Lucky? At this point we're 10 min. into the movie, but to tell you more of the pot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out. Couple of comments: this is the latest movie from director John Carroll Lynch, who most recently brought us "The Founder" and "Jackie". Here he goes a very different direction, namely to give legendary Hollywood actor Harry Dean Stanton one last lead performance, in a role specifically written for Stanton. Lucky is, like Stanton in real life, 90 years and grew up in Kentucky, so this is almost (but of course not quite) a look at the real Harry Dean Stanton. There are some fine secondary roles in this, including David Lynch as Howard the turtle guy (Stanton has played in a number of Lynch movies), and Tom Skerritt as the WWI Marine veteran. But in the end this is all about watching Stanton, who remained in full control of all of his acting talent (check out the scene where Lucky attends a Mexican fiesta...). As it turned out, this was indeed Stanton's very last film (he passed away exactly a month ago today), and what a towering last performance that turned out to be! You can bet your last dollar that Stanton will get a posthumous Best Actor Oscar nomination for this. "Lucky" finally opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. The Sunday early evening screening where I saw this at was not attended well (5 people, including myself), That is a darn shame. I imagine interest in this movie will pick up coming the awards season. If you want to see an amazing actor at work in the last part of his life, in a movie that is rich in so many ways, I'd suggest you check this out, be it in the theater, on Amazon Instant Video or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray.

There aren't any other movies like this one. No answers, just the blue sky and the desert. Who else gives us the end of our lives so bleakly, so movingly, and so warmly? At the very end Lucky spots Mr. Roosevelt, the tortoise who escaped Howard's yard and will live--probably--another hundred years, and he almost smiles. That's about the size of it for him. And for many of the rest of us.

2017 saw the passing of both Harry Dean Stanton and Sam Shepard, two-thirds of the creative triumvirate behind the classic 1984 road movie / western PARIS, TEXAS. Wim Wenders and Shephard contrived to give Stanton - a career character actor - one of the greatest roles in twentieth century cinema and he owned every guilt-ridden moment of that film. John Carroll Lynch, in many ways a modern day Stanton, uses his directorial debut to showcase the ninety-year-old Stanton's formidable cussedness and aching vulnerability in a way that is as perfect a bookend to an acting career as GRAN TORINO was to Clint Eastwood. LUCKY is a deceptively simple tale of a determinedly alone old naval officer, who has got to the stage in life where even his doctor (a fabulous cameo from Ed Begley Jr.) has nothing to tell him when he takes a dizzy tumble. This is an old man, going about things the only way he knows how. His days are a series of little routines sparingly conveyed through repetition and variation in the first half of the film. He knows he is going to die, he knows this scares him, but he also knows there is little else he can do other than persist, like the best of Samuel Beckett's characters. There is something a little reminiscent of another Wenders' film in LUCKY, namely LIGHTNING OVER WATER. In that part-documentary, Wenders' sought to approach his own fear of death through the imminent mortality of veteran Hollywood filmmaker and close friend Nicholas Ray. Carroll Lynch is similarly engaging with the genuine fears of vulnerabilities of the ageing Stanton, as a means of tapping in to a wider understanding of what death is and what it means. The film vacillates between profound human empathy and a less appealing, although far less prominent, sentimentality. It is often at its strongest in the barroom scenes in which Lucky goes through the motions of his compromised masculinity and desperately rails against and longs for the reckoning that remains a few miles further down the road. Carroll Lynch keeps the overall tone light and as sunny as the Californian landscape that his film cleaves to, which only makes moments like when Stanton lets rip with a Mariachi band all the more poignant, urgent and arresting. With some great supporting turns from the likes of David Lynch, Tom Skerritt and Ron Livingston, this perfectly formed, smallscale movie, has much bigger concerns at its heart.

What can you say about this movie and this performance. It resonated with me in so many ways. The existential journey was so perfectly centered in this character. The dialogue, the character development, and the story that was proffered were perfectly in sync. One of the best films I have ever had the pleasure of viewing. I'll be going back to this time and time again.

Beams crack through the window, and a radio sparks a tune. Lucky twirls the dial to cut off the morning theme, reaching for a cigarette to breathe. Hybrid yoga calisthenics disrupt his lung blackening, and a digital coffee pot blares a preset time. A ritualized beginning slowly bleeds all meaning. Lucky earned his name by doing nothing much at all. His non- combative post in the Navy as a backseat soldier birthed this apt moniker. A suitable title, for even his physician cannot fathom the stock of good fortune the old bastard possesses. With the health of an oxen, Lucky seems doomed to an immortal life sentence. A word fiend by heart, he has a dictionary of biblical proportions enthroned on a sunlit pulpit. The morning paper offers a grid of linguistic possibilities to quench his lust for articulation. Each day comes with a new pillar of language that Lucky attaches a melodramatic but charming significance to. Stopping by predictable spaces, his daily proceedings have a cyclical and absolute geography. The diner feeds his hunger for camaraderie. The grocery outlet fills his calcium and nicotine addictions. And the tavern houses a captive audience that will occasionally entertain his existential ramblings. Howard might be the only friend left that resonates with Lucky's twilight nightmares. Ascribing galactic meaning to his tortoises, Howard chooses to be in awe at every possible moment. Lucky still has a knack in upsetting the open-minded Howard, but only due to his brash form of prophecy. Not a particularly wise man, Lucky gains insight that is indecipherable to his peers. A deteriorating man stuck in a town that shrinks whenever his knowledge expands. A mortal coil suffocates his desire to thumb through etymology, and sends him into the desert to examine callous cacti.

Last movie one actor films is always a sad occasion even if that actor lives to be over 90 as Harry Dean Stanton did. This fact represent the main quality of ''Lucky'', a painfully slow story about the 91-year old atheist starting nowhere and leading us there. Long cuts, wide frames will mimic the spirit of ''Paris, Texas'' but in an empty way, as so will the vague and disdainful dialogues of the other characters irritate the mind of even a beyond average viewer. ''Lucky'' is the last movie of a really great actor and nothing more than that.

Lucky is both eerie and alluring in that it hasn't just turned out to be Harry Dean Stanton's swan song, it's as if all of those involved in the making of it were watching the Grim Reaper approach Mr. Stanton from a distance during filming.They were certainly aware - and impressed - that he was 90 years old. There's not a bad performance in the whole film; everyone gives a thoughtful, elegant performance as if there is no room for childishness in the presence of the approaching death of their friend. Surely Mr. Stanton could feel to the core that his days were numbered, and wow did that make for an eloquent performance in a role perfectly suited for him. Despite Lucky being a film about the waning of life, it's not a morose film; the message seems to be that while death is scary, you can still smile at it, and still smile till the end. And while you lose some liveliness as you grow old, that doesn't mean that you have to lose your feistiness. As much as I enjoyed Lucky, I also believe that a good filmmaker could have followed almost any old man for a few weeks with a video camera and come up with an equally interesting film. Lucky is essentially one down-to-earth old man's tale of a rather unexciting present-day life, and that's about it...but maybe that's special in itself. Still, I didn't see a whole lot that was fantastic about it beyond Mr. Stanton's performance. But there's no denying that it's a well-made film, with poignant and sometimes amusing moments, moving stories from the distant past, and many good shots of the desolate, solitary desert.

Just recently saw an independent film called "Lucky" with the now late character actor Harry Dean Stanton and clearly it was a touching swan song for Harry and for those who viewed it. Stanton is Lucky a living 90 year old man who's probably at the end of the tunnel despite okay health. And you guessed it he's set in his ways especially with the belief that he doesn't want to face death or he's not too set on the believe of a higher power. Living in the southwest Lucky's days are spent walking, and going to the local bar and diner to drink and he passes his time during the day after getting up working puzzles and watching game shows. Plus he even smokes some weed with a new African American female friend. And the chats and visits with locals and friends help Lucky move along. Still thru it all this old man is set in his ways he who doesn't want new acceptance or change in which he fears in his small town life it's a long last reflection on life and being who he is. The supporting cast is well rounded here with David Lynch, Ed Begley Jr., Tom Skeritt and others. Overall well done film of one looking at their life and surroundings and coming to terms with time and reflection without change.