Stanton’s low-key, life-affirming charmer

Dir John Carroll Lynch Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Barry Shabaka Henley, Yvonne Huff Lee, Beth Grant, Ron Livingston, Tom Skerritt, David Lynch

For the first 30 years of his working life, Harry Dean Stanton mostly got by on walk-on roles. Then the world saw him walk. His entrance in Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas, traipsing across the golden-red West Texas plains, seemed to encapsulate everything the then-57year-old actor could stand for – the landscape’s severity, grandeur and cosmic indifference was all there in his weather-worn face. Now cinemagoers have the chance to watch him walk again in Lucky: not quite the last film Stanton made before his death one year ago at the age of 91, but unquestionably a worthy send-off.

Directed by John Carroll Lynch, this surreal, meandering comedy stars Stanton as an elderly resident of a sleepy desert town who spends much of his time strolling down empty streets and along dusty trails, with a growing awareness that his own journey through life will soon be brought to a close. It was written specifically with Stanton in mind.

It also features a hugely appealing supporting turn from the director David Lynch as a drinking buddy whose pet tortoise has, to quote, “run off ”. Lucky is Stanton’s character’s nickname, and the film starts by setting out his daily routine: a wash, a glass of milk, morning exercises with a half-finished cigarette parked in the coffee-table ashtray, then a stroll to the local diner for coffee and a crossword. Then game shows at home and a drink at the local roadhouse. Lucky sees himself as an loner, but the town is a little snowglobe-sized ecosystem of oddballs, which Lynch and his cast sketch out with patience and affection.

Then, while staring at the flashing, un-set digital clock on his coffee machine, Lucky has a dizzy spell. Recovering, he realises his time is short, and as an atheist, has no hope of anything beyond. So what changes? Nothing, yet somehow everything. Life progresses much as it ever did – but with a crisp awareness, on our part at least, that each encounter counts.

This is not a sentimental film in the usual sense, but it is studded with moments of poignant, low-key strangeness. “Harry Dean Stanton is Lucky,” the opening titles proclaim – perhaps cheekily inviting us to respond, as he trudges past cacti, that he doesn’t particularly look it. But lucky he was, just by dint of being here – and so, this film quietly reminds us, are we. RC