A meditation on mortality

Lucky is the directorial debut of prolific actor John Carroll Lynch, who has worked with everyone from John Woo (in Face/Off) to David Fincher (in Zodiac) to Martin Scorsese (in Shutter Island), and appeared in recurring roles on TV shows as varied as The Drew Carey Show, Carnivàle, and American Horror Story. However, more noteworthy than this is that Lucky features the last performance from the legendary Harry Dean Stanton, who was 90 at the time of shooting (Michael Oblowitz's as-yet-unreleased Frank and Ava was shot prior to Lucky), and who died on September 15, 2017, two weeks prior to the film's US release. Written specifically for Stanton by Logan Sparks (one of his closest friends) and Drago Sumonja, the film is a meditation on mortality, and is as much about Stanton himself as it is the eponymous character he's playing. Beginning like a quirky comedy full of strange characters with gentle eccentricities (imagine a David Lynch film softened by John Waters), the film later morphs into a more serious meditation on how a nonagenarian atheist with no family faces up to the fact that death is not that far away. Moving entirely at its own measured pace, the film manages to explore a plethora of themes along the way; mortality, routine, impermanence, friendship, love, loss, regret, hope. Laidback and tender, graceful and sedate, Lucky works primarily by way of presenting individual vignettes that very much add up to more than the sum of their parts.

For my complete review, please visit: https://boxd.it/wIyBV