Film: Lucky

'Lucky', John Carroll Lynch's directorial debut, featuring Harry Dean Stanton in his last starring role, is out this week in cinemas across the UK and Ireland.

Beautifully shot, this slow-moving, quirky film follows a few days in the life of a 90-year-old atheist and the people that inhabit his off the map desert town. Having out-lived and out-smoked all of his contemporaries, the fiercely independent Lucky finds himself questioning what its all about.

A kind of meditation on mortality, loneliness, spirituality and human connection, the film is also a love letter to the life and career of Harry Dean Stanton - best known for his work in Cool Hand Luke, Alien, Paris, Texas and Repo Man. The actor died at the age of 91, shortly after the film was made.

Not a lot happens, but rather like the 'The Station Agent' - or Eric Rohmer's Spring, Summer Autumn and Winter films - there is a good deal going on.

Watching this film I was reminded of Yevtushenko's poem 'People', in which he writes:

'No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them in not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute
These are private....

Watch a trailer for Lucky here: https://youtu.be/E5CgTeup_Ok or the Lucky website: www.luckyfilm.co.uk