---

Lucky (2017) marks only the second time its 90-year-old star, prolific character actor Harry Dean Stanton, ever stood at the forefront of a movie. It also proved, shortly after its release, to be his second-to-last time making one. (Stanton died, at 91, some six months after its premiere.) Lucky may not technically be Stanton’s swan song, but you’d be hard-pressed to watch it and not think of it like one. In this elegiac, but also touching and life-affirming movie, Stanton plays a character not unlike himself: an elderly veteran, atheist, sometimes-singer, and dilettantish yogi with a hankering for chain-smoking and shooting the shit over Bloody Marias. His nickname gives the movie its title — a nod to the fact that he’s still kicking at nearly 100.

Seemingly contented enough in his old age, lounging in a cyclical and rather isolated existence, Lucky doesn’t often dwell on his mortality. Then it’s suddenly all he can think about when, one afternoon, he collapses in his home roosted on the edges of the small desert town where he’s resided most of his life. Lucky’s endearing cantankerousness doesn’t noticeably fade to anyone in town, though he does vulnerably admit to the waitress friend (Yvonne Huff) who stops by one day to smoke pot and watch TV that he’s feeling scared lately. The future not so long ago seemed like something guaranteed forever. Now that certainty feels as fragile as his 100-pounds-wet body looks. 

Directed by another famous character (John Carroll Lynch, making his filmmaking debut) and co-written by two men that clearly care a great deal about Stanton — one is Logan Sparks, who for years worked as Stanton’s assistant, and the other is Drago Sumonja, who once helmed a movie about character actors in which Stanton was prominently featured — Lucky functions twofold. It’s one final celebration of a tremendous actor who never got his proper due; it’s also a poignant, though never overly precious, portrait of an unmarried and most likely childless man staring down the barrel of his own mortality and considering what he’s had and lost. 

Lucky is a bare-bones, downtempo movie. It mostly collects simple to sneakily profound interactions Stanton has with friends and acquaintances furnishing his daily routine. Like Stanton, key supporting players are instantly recognizable character actors; they include Beth Grant, Ed Begley, Jr., Barry Shabaka Henley, and Ron Livingston. You sense as many of them perform that when they heard the news that this movie would position Stanton as the leading man for once, they said of course to signing up. (David Lynch and Tom Skerritt, both of whom have notably collaborated with Stanton before, also stop by.) 

The plainness and nonchalance of Lucky’s approach initially feels a bit stilted, limitingly mannered. I’ve seen it likened frequently to the drily absurd works of Jim Jarmusch or David Lynch when he’s operating outside the strange for which he’s known. But after a while the assembly of unflashy (if never super biographically revealing) exchanges between Stanton and his scene partners gain a cumulative power. That’s both because his existence feels so plausible that you begin to look at Lucky as an ornery neighbor you yourself have talked to and felt affection for, and because Stanton, a lovable actor whose seen-it-all weariness is sometimes brightened by his fetching smile, is a performer it’s hard not to invest in. 

Stanton appeared in so many movies — most of which weren’t worthy of him — that for most of his career one might have cherished him without even knowing his name. It was easy to unwittingly take him a little bit for granted, never really considering the possibility of going to a movie and it literally not being possible for him to potentially stop by. 

Near the end of Lucky, we get one of the best scenes ever to feature the actor. During a birthday party, Stanton bursts out into impromptu song, accompanied cheerily by live musicians at the event. Lots of reasons make it emotional. It reminded me how emotive and evocative a singer Stanton was — a talent that wasn’t as tapped in his movies as it ought to have been. It distills in just a few moments how haunting and magnetic a screen presence he was. And it made me consider how without John Carroll Lynch and his duo of screenwriters paying attention we might not have ever gotten an overpowering moment like this to so properly close out Stanton’s long career. Lucky is hardly the best movie Stanton was ever part of, but it’s among the few interested in his essence and not purely as actorly decor. Like Stanton himself, you can’t help but be thankful it exists.