Lucky

_"The future is not ours to see."_

LUCKY is a love letter to death. A film that touches upon many things: routine, loneliness, fragility, fear, sadness and, ultimately, acceptance. A film so preoccupied with death and the acceptance of our own mortality, that it's impossible not to make connections with the recent passing of Harry Dean Stanton.

There's a lot of existential and nihilistic thoughts in here. Lucky and Harry Dean Stanton share the same war stories and the same bleak but liberating worldview. They smoke the same cigarettes and live in the same house. There are two tales that show how Lucky is the person he is, why he thinks as he thinks. A tale that Harry Dean lived himself after accidentally shooting and killing a bird that gives us a glimpse on that, probably, first time he got such existential thoughts. While the second tale, comes from a young Lucky who suffered from an anxiety induced panic attack at his aunt's house but points towards a same realization. "_There was nothing for a moment. It was like looking into a void, just blackness. Everything was black. There was nothing. Then my aunt came back,_" he recalls.

Lucky talks about many things and shows two characters facing the same questions but approaching them differently. Eventually, Lucky says that truth is the most important thing. That truth is a thing of who we are and what we do and we've to accept it. That your truth is different from everyone else's but, in the end, we're all living the universe's truth. But that the of the universe is waiting like a void where all that we are will eventually go into because the universe is in charge and then we'll be left with nothing. Because the truth of the universe is nothing. I guess I should say that I've been dealing with my own existential and nihilistic thoughts for a while now, trying to figure out death and face my mortality; so maybe that's why, especially parts of, this resonated so much with me. But if LUCKY did anything, it was showing me that there can be joy in nihilism. And perhaps Lucky has it right, you just have to smile.

This film was a treasure, from the legendary cast to the fantastic story. I loved every second of it and did not want it to end. What a fitting sendoff for Stanton.

https://ihatebadmovies.com/movies/lucky/

I feel like I just completed a trilogy that started many years ago, first with _The Straight Story_ (1999) with Richard Farnsworth, then _Nebraska_ (2013) with Bruce Dern, and now _Lucky_ (2017) with Harry Dean Stanton. These films are such fine tributes to the actors in addition to stimulating thoughts about life, death, friends & family, and what we leave behind when we're gone.

In one of his last roles on film, Stanton gives a sublime performance as a man facing up to his mortality. It is a shame that the actor himself met his maker shortly after, but at least he was given a role that will stand the test of time. I salute you Mr. Stanton, you will be missed.

An excellent movie about old age in the middle of nowhere in the US. An excellent performance by Harry Dean Stanton, who died soon after making this movie.

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

Dialogue is bit too philosophical and ott at times, and it lost me at some point in the middle, but there are some really great moments in it.

Many other people are going to love this film much more than I, and for that I am grateful.