A fine, moving farewell to Stanton

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This article was published 03/01/2018 (3064 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It feels right that one of the last films of Harry Dean Stanton, who died last September at the age of 91, should be about mortality. The story of a man facing down death with nothing but his own stubborn sense of himself, Lucky is an affecting but uneven study of aging and endings.

This small, quiet comic drama is also the salute of one character actor to another, being a deeply affectionate homage to Stanton’s hangdog face and ornery persona from debut director and veteran supporting player John Carroll Lynch. (You might not be familiar with the name, but a quick internet search will bring you his immediately recognizable mug. He’s an always solid and sometimes brilliant “that guy in that thing” kind of actor.)

Stanton’s character, who is Lucky by name and lucky by nature, lives in a depressed and dusty Arizona town, where he fills his long days with a series of rigid habits and rituals.

Lucky washes up. He pauses his incessant chain-smoking to perform some jerky, eccentric yoga poses. He dresses in jeans and one of his identical plaid shirts. He heads to a diner, does a crossword puzzle, picks up milk at a convenience store, watches game shows, and ends his day with a nightcap at a bar completely populated by colourful characters.

Each day is like the next — at least until Lucky has an unlucky fall. His doctor’s diagnosis? “You’re old, and you’re getting older.”

Conveniently, Lucky has just been doing some crossword-related research into realism (“the practice or attitude of accepting a situation as it is, and acting accordingly,” he reads), so he decides to realistically assess his life in the shadow of his impending death.

Except for his starring turns in 1980s arthouse faves Paris, Texas and Repo Man, Stanton has not been a leading man. Instead, he has specialized in small but indelible roles, with a line in two-bit grifters, sinister prophets, oddball losers and gentle melancholics.

This project, then, in which Stanton’s weathered face and wiry figure are in every scene, is a boon to his fans. Lucky offers a concentrated examination of Stanton’s stoic countenance, underplayed inflections and, in particular, his gift for silence.

There are other reliable character actors here, including Ed Begley Jr., Barry Shabaka Henley, James Darren and Beth Grant. Twin Peaks auteur David Lynch, always a treat onscreen, brings his off-kilter Americana to the role of a dandied-up barfly.

Even with this accomplished cast — and another gifted actor at the helm — there are scenes that come off as stiff and stilted. Screenwriters Drago Sumonja and Logan Sparks, both occasional actors, favour long monologues, which don’t always connect up with the larger story and often feel more like standalone audition pieces.

Still, if this is a film of isolated moments rather than sustained story, some of those moments are extraordinary. David Lynch’s character comically mourns the recent escape of his 100-year-old tortoise. (“He’s outlived two of my wives.”) Lucky lies on his solitary bed surrounded by Johnny Cash’s harrowing, haunting cover of Will Oldham’s I See a Darkness.

And these disparate parts are almost held together by Stanton’s central performance. The gathering together of the weight and experience of a long career and even longer life, his work here makes for a moving comment on the precious and fragile nature of the human condition.

This is not a perfect film, but if you’re a Harry Dean Stanton fan, Lucky makes for a fitting farewell.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca