FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Lucky 

Lucky starts with a series of shots of the Arizona desert. With cactuses reaching into the sky and a turtle crawling through the sand. Then we experience their human equivalent: It is Harry Dean Stanton as Lucky. No, not AS Lucky. Harry Dean Stanton IS Lucky, as the movie poster says. Harry Dean Stanton, then 89 years old and deceased before the film was released. During the following 88 minutes we will spend almost every moment together with Lucky. A veteran from World War II, retired a long time ago. Lucky has friends, but he often snubs them. He has his routine and as with most old people, this routine shapes his everyday life. During his walks, he stops in a cafe, talks to the owner (Barry Shabaka Henley) and a waitress (Yvonne Huff), who behaves almost like a daughter. We get to know his tiny home and his favourite bar. In the morning Lucky does some pushups to stay fit. Lucky achieves his depth with the shots of Harry Dean Stanton in front of a panorama that would adorn any western. Lucky is about death and fear of death. It's about loneliness and the will to stay healthy. It's about decisions that have never been made. Lucky regrets a lot. This is probably mainly because he prefers to argue with people rather than just talk to them. He is never open and he is certainly not vulnerable. Essential: Lucky's atheism, which in turn reveals a lot about his relationship to death. "Friendship is essential to the soul"; explains his friend Paulie at the bar. Lucky disagrees. She doesn't exist. The friendship? No, the soul. Lucky is also about friendship and this becomes most obvious in the conversations with Lucy's friend Howard (David Lynch). We remember: Harry Dean Stanton IS Lucky and Lynch Harry Dean Stanton's friend and something like his house director. Lucky is one of those men who doesn't want to make new friends at some point in their lives. All the more surprising for us and himself when he opens up to younger people! I've seen so many American movies trying to be Lucky. They play in small towns or in neighborhoods that meet in bars. Full of eccentrics, of course. But only very few of them are as elegant as Lucky and above all as safely staged! This was not necessarily predictable, as Lucky was shot by actor John Carroll Lynch (not related). That's because he trusts Harry Dean Stanton completely. That's why he succeeds in scenes like the one in which Lucky smokes and thinks about cigarettes at night. One of Johnny Cash's late songs is on. One of the songs Cash recorded in the face of death. Harry Dean Stanton's tanned face acts like a film in the film. We experience a whole life in this face! Certainly one of the most powerful scenes I've ever seen. Somehow I had the feeling that I had actually known him. We get to keep this scene as Harry Dean Stanton's estate.