Lucky

With the death of Harry Dean Stanton in September, the American cinema lost one of its finest character actors, so it’s only fitting that he got what could conceivably be the best send-off any actor has ever received from a final role. Directing his first feature, fellow character actor John Carroll Lynch has created a moving meditation on mortality and meaning, an elegiac slice of life rendered all the more poignant by its star’s demise. Lucky is a powerful work that finds beauty in tragedy on a particularly human scale, and it gives Stanton one last chance to shine — something that should have happened more often.

The term “character actor” is particularly significant to what Lynch is up to here because he’s populated his cast entirely with performers to which that designation could be applied. More importantly, he’s granted them each ample screen time and roles that give them something to work with. Recognizable faces, including Ed Begley Jr., Ron Livingston, Tom Skerritt and Beth Grant, all get a chance to take the foreground for once, and David Lynch steals every scene he’s in as a bar regular with a missing tortoise (don’t call it a turtle). Screenwriters Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja crafted their script with Stanton in mind, and the film plays like a tribute not only to its star but to every talented thespian who has ever been relegated to background parts.

There’s not much story to speak of, as the narrative effectively centers on its eponymous protagonist’s impending mortality. Stanton’s Lucky, a chain-smoking World War II veteran with a curmudgeonly disposition and no patience for bullshit, is confronted with a relatively straightforward existential dilemma: While he’s in improbably good health, he knows his days are numbered. With an atheistic philosophy and no close relationships, he’s stuck searching for meaning as the clock winds down. As dramatic stakes go, it’s far from blockbuster material, but Stanton’s masterfully understated performance creates a sense of weight and significance that is impossible to avoid.

John Carroll Lynch’s directorial prowess is surprisingly strong, though his influences are occasionally too overt. His sweeping desert panoramas bear the unmistakable fingerprints of John Ford, and the strains of “Red River Valley” played by Stanton on the harmonica dispel any potential ambiguity. The story is decidedly in the vein of the Italian neorealists, to the extent that Stanton recites the dictionary definition of realism not once, but twice. But if Lynch, Sparks and Sumonja are stealing, at least they’re lifting from the best — and always in service to the world and characters they’ve created.

Still, at the end of the day, this film will be remembered as the epitaph of an actor whose career spanned six decades, who was always a welcome appearance on screen, and who, by all accounts, was a pretty decent guy in real life. It’s impossible to watch Lucky, with its pervasive themes of mortality and loss, without thinking about the loss of Stanton himself. It’s borderline criminal that his last star turn was in 1984’s Paris, Texas — but at least he left us with something wonderful on his way out. It’s a shame they don’t make ’em like Harry Dean anymore, but we’re lucky they still make films like Lucky. Not Rated. Now Playing at Grail Moviehouse.