Lucky

A meditation on mortality

The movie is written for and in every way inspired by Harry Dean Stanton. The stories in the film are stories from his life and it is definitely an "inspired by" movie. The story of Lucky is not the story of Harry Dean Stanton but Lucky's stories are Harry Dean Stanton's stories. That is how the material was built and when we started to put it together, that is where my focus was - to make sure that the story of Lucky was clear and focused through the material.

• John Carroll Lynch; "Inspired by a Legend: John Carroll Lynch on Lucky" (Peter Sobczynski); RogerEbert.com (September 25, 2017)

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, grac...