Having outlived and out smoked all of his contemporaries, the fiercely independent Lucky finds himself at the precipice of life, thrust into a journey of self-exploration, leading towards that which is so often unattainable: enlightenment. Acclaimed character actor John Carroll Lynch’s directorial debut, Lucky, is at once a love letter to the life and career of Harry Dean Stanton as well as a meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality, and human connection.
Matt Zoller Seitz, editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com, had this to say about this month’s Jasper Film Club selection:
“Lucky is an old US Navy veteran of rigid habits and attitudes in a small town.
When his routine is interrupted by a sudden collapse at home, Lucky finds himself realizing that his remarkably healthy old age is going to face an inevitable decline and he has to accept it.
In that difficult reassessment, Lucky must face up to what he believes in and how much it compares to his neighbours’ priorities. In doing so, Lucky finds that his life has its positive side as he searches for some meaning that he can accept.
I’ve seen a lot of movies that try to be “Lucky”—movies about eccentric people in a small town or neighborhood who hang out in bars and coffee shops and have conversations—but very few that have this film’s elegant shape, its sense of when to hang back and listen and when to let the camera tell the story, and when to end a thought and move on to the next one.”
