Lucky

LUCKY           B                   

USA  (88 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  John Carroll Lynch             Official site

Well, I gotta go, my shows are on.

—Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton)

A slow and meandering tale about the journey of life, as seen through the eyes of an aging character who has been fortunate to remain healthy through his waning years, none other than 90-year old actor Harry Dean Stanton, someone known affectionately as Lucky throughout the small Southwestern town he lives in, where it follows in the footsteps of other outstanding films on the subject, namely David Lynch’s Disney film THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999), starring 79-year old Richard Farnsworth in his final role, with Harry Dean Stanton making an appearance at the end of that film which couldn’t be more appropriate.  Amusingly, David Lynch makes an appearance here as a man suffering from the profound effects of losing his best friend, a 100-year old tortoise that goes by the name of President Roosevelt who makes an escape through an open gate and scoots away, adding a touch of personal intimacy throughout, the kind of characterization that defines the film.  Much of it emblematic of Stanton’s own life, Lucky is seen doing crossword puzzles, watching old game shows on TV, while exhibiting a passion for singing Mexican songs, yet what’s most poignant is the actor’s own death coming just weeks prior to the release of the film, making this a stunning final farewell, becoming the centerpiece of his own film, where he is viewed as a national treasure, with the camera following his every move.  With nearly two-hundred credits in a career spanning six decades, Stanton was a regular on various westerns on TV in the late 50’s and 60’s, was the best man at Jack Nicholson’s wedding in 1962, and even lived together for more than two years after his divorce, while also singing “Danny Boy” at the funeral of Hunter S. Thompson.  Working with eclectic directors from Monte Hellman in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Sam Peckinpah in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Ridley Scott in Alien (1979), and John Carpenter in Escape from New York (1981), always playing a character actor in secondary roles, Stanton is among the best to ever do it, where his big breakthrough came with Wim Wenders strange American odyssey film, Paris, Texas (1984), with Stanton finally playing a starring role, a psychologically damaged character who was mostly silent, but whose stunning monologue near the end is a thing of legends, written by Sam Shepard, backtracking through the most painful moments of his life in dreamlike flashback sequences, actually improved upon in Robert Altman’s Fool for Love (1985), another Shepard effort, where Stanton’s profound eloquence speaking over the flashbacks is simply mind-altering.  To his credit, Stanton has become an endearing character on the American cinematic landscape playing primarily isolated or lonesome characters, building his reputation as something of an outcast or an outlaw, a man on the fringe of society who always speaks his mind, uncensored, yet inevitably ends up alone, having spent a lifetime accumulating memories filled with regrets.  According to Shepard, Stanton didn’t really have to act in order to tell a story, reminding us “His face is the story.”

While David Lynch has developed a particular fondness for casting Stanton, appearing in several shorts, four of his feature films, while also featuring him in five episodes of his revamped television series of Twin Peaks (2017), where he is seen here singing “Red River Valley,” Harry Dean Stanton - Red River Valley - YouTube (1:09), this same tune becomes the predominate theme with Stanton on the harmonica playing throughout this new film, where we watch him follow his daily routine, waking up, turning on a Spanish music radio station, washing his face and armpits, brushing his teeth, combing his hair, lighting a cigarette, doing morning yoga exercises in his underwear between puffs, drinking the only thing he has in his refrigerator, a chilled, already poured glass of milk, with several cartons lined up to be next, before finally selecting what he’s going to wear.  As he walks out the door to face a new day, it looks pretty much like every other day, where his established routines define his life.  Heading for the local diner, he orders coffee and works the local newspaper crossword puzzle, frequently asking customers for assistance, where he’s well looked after by the cook, Barry Shabaka Henley, the bartender playing a similar role in Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016), while a doting waitress, Yvonne Huff as Loretta, takes a personal interest, treating him as if he’s family, expressing one of the joys of small towns, where people tend to look after one another.  Afterwards, he heads around the corner to a local market, buying cigarettes and his carton of milk from the Mexican proprietor (Bertila Damas), exchanging pleasantries in a combination of English and Spanish before disappearing back home to watch his quiz shows.  Each evening, he drinks Bloody Mary’s at the local bar, owned and operated by Elaine (Beth Grant) and her husband Paulie (James Darren), often meeting his best friend Howard (David Lynch), commiserating over his missing tortoise, who happens to be Howard’s best friend.  This little touch offers a glimpse into the lives of the elderly, or just lonely people, as often the only friend they have in the world is their pet, heaping all their social skills onto that one animal, not knowing what to do with themselves when the animal is gone.  Howard is particularly effected, making what might be the most heartfelt defense of his missing friend during an anguished moment of exposed vulnerability, yet it’s especially affecting, small and tender, the kind of moment you’ll only find in a film like this, Lucky clip - Gone  (2:29).  It’s always fun to share moments with film directors “in front of” the camera, as it feels like a rare privilege. 

About as intimate as you can get, there are deafening silences in this film, small and large, but there’s also an understated humanness in every sequence, including Ed Begley Jr. as his physician, where Lucky visits him in his office after suffering an inexplicable fall, indicating the tests reveal no lingering issues, who simply has no medical answers for how one man can smoke nearly every day of his life and his lungs are completely clear, reporting Lucky is amazingly healthy for a man of his age, informing him, “You know most people don’t get to where you are, they never get to the moment you’re in right now, where you have the ability to witness what you’re going through and clearly examine it.”  One of the sweeter moments is a visit from Loretta, who simply stops by one day unannounced, checking up on him, catching him in an awkward moment watering his plants in his underwear.  With no ulterior motive other than pure friendship, they sit down and share a joint together while watching Liberace on TV, an entertainer so flamboyantly different he may as well be from outer space, yet it leads to a stunning personal confession, revealing for perhaps the first time in his entire life that “I’m scared,” a universal truth when it comes to aging.  Tom Skerritt shows up in the diner one morning wearing a Marine insignia on his cap, drawing the interest of Lucky, who was in the Navy, as the two rehash old war stories about World War II, but certainly not the kind we’re used to hearing.  While there are moments between moments that are filled only by the presence and personality of Stanton, who easily fills the screen with his monumentally recognizable face, there are a few stand-out moments, one of which is a lengthy scene simply watching Lucky at home alone smoking a cigarette as we hear the somber tones of Johnny Cash calling out to us from the grave, Johnny Cash - I See A Darkness. - YouTube (3:42), a particularly haunting song that sends chills up the spine contemplating one’s own mortality.  Lucky is extremely aware he’s closer to the end, but that doesn’t seem to bother him, instead he shares what little wisdom he has with others while remaining true to himself, laughing in the face of the void, even offering a singular moment when that look is directly at the camera, a cinematic tribute to none other than Giulietta Masina who does the same near the end of Fellini’s THE NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), easily one of her most poignant moments.  But perhaps the scene of the film belongs to Stanton, invited to a young boy’s birthday party, “Juan Wayne,” the son of the grocery lady, where they have food, flan, a piñata, and even a mariachi band, when suddenly out of nowhere Lucky breaks into a traditional mariachi song, “Volver, volver,” dramatically singing in what appears to be perfect Spanish, Exclusive Lucky Clip “Mariachi” - Harry Dean Stanton - YouTube (1:19), surprising everyone, including those in the audience, providing a kind of effortless poetry that is a beautiful tribute to his memory. 

As a kind of bonus video from an earlier documentary, HARRY DEAN STANTON: PARTLY FICTION (2012), Actor Harry Dean Stanton sings (Bonus video) | Kentucky Muse | KET ... YouTube (4:10), Stanton can be seen joyously singing more songs in his living room with Michelle Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas.

Paterson

 

PATERSON               B                    

USA  (118 mi)  2016  d:  Jim Jarmusch

Paterson lies in the valley under the Passaic Falls
its spent waters forming the outline of his back. He
lies on his right side, head near the thunder
of the waters filling his dreams! Eternally asleep,
his dreams walk about the city where he persists
incognito. Butterflies settle on his stone ear.
Immortal he neither moves nor rouses and is seldom
seen, though he breathes and the subtleties of his machinations
drawing their substance from the noise of the pouring river
animate a thousand automations. Who because they
neither know their sources nor the sills of their
disappointments walk outside their bodies aimlessly
      for the most part,
locked and forgot in their desires-unroused.

—Say it, no ideas but in things—
  nothing but the blank faces of the houses
  and cylindrical trees
  bent, forked by preconception and accident—
  split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained—
  secret—into the body of the light!

From above, higher than the spires, higher
even than the office towers, from oozy fields
abandoned to gray beds of dead grass,
black sumac, withered weed-stalks,
mud and thickets cluttered with dead leaves-
the river comes pouring in above the city
and crashes from the edge of the gorge
in a recoil of spray and rainbow mists-

  (What common language to unravel?
  . . .combed into straight lines
  from that rafter of a rock's
  lip.)

A man like a city and a woman like a flower
—who are in love. Two women. Three women.
Innumerable women, each like a flower.

                        But
only one man—like a city.

—Paterson, by William Carlos Williams, published in five volumes, from 1946 to 1958, From Book I, Paterson by William Carlos Williams - Famous poems ...

A return to a cinema defined by small moments of existential reverie, feeling more like fables or fragments of dreams, as expressed in Jarmusch’s earlier film COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003), though this film has a more cohesive plotline that holds all the material together, but otherwise it’s similarly structured around a series of vignettes, where a rhythm of life is established by following a single character, a bus driver aptly named Paterson (Adam Driver), who goes about his daily routines in the town of Paterson, New Jersey, a city made famous by an epic series of poems by William Carlos Williams.  While this is among the more understated films on record, it isn’t without several elegiac moments, yet, much like another recent film Fences (2016), an adaptation of an August Wilson play set in Pittsburgh, the film fails to transcend its working class existence, where people are boxed into claustrophobic realities, where race is an economically restrictive component for Wilson, while poetry is presumably the way out of similar suffocating restrictions for Paterson, yet he is similarly confined by mind numbing work routines that make it exceedingly difficult to rise above the regimented parameters demanded by the job, as evidenced by another bus driver Donny (Rizwan Manji) who incessantly complains about the daily grind that often feels overwhelming.  Not sure there won’t be more viewers identifying with Donny’s plight than Paterson’s seemingly unflappable demeanor, as most would find it hard to get past the accumulated rigor and more demanding aspects of work that take its toll over time, preventing workers from having a greater sense of independence.  There are only a few that reach utopian pleasure from work, turning it into a positive environment where they literally thrive from being constantly replenished on a spiritual level, yet that is the main thrust of this film, where it defies social realism and instead becomes a provocative imaginary treatise on the way it could and perhaps should be, but unfortunately isn’t for the mass majority of human beings on the planet.  Inhabiting a dreamlike structure, the film exists in an imaginary world, where the economic and social pressures that consume us on a regular basis simply don’t exist, where we’re instead free to collectively pursue our dreams in a utopian world where life is as we imagine it instead of the way it is.

While it’s a challenging premise, it’s also interesting that Adam Driver has been associated with what might be called other mind-altering works, as he’s a significant player in the supernatural Jeff Nichols film Midnight Special (2016), where in each he seems to have the capacity to channel interior worlds most of us are incapable of seeing, as here he plays an everyday, ordinary man, yet he finds the extraordinary in the ordinary, tapping into the world around him, in keeping with the daily rhythms of life, writing existential poetry that finds beauty in the banal, where “Only one man like a city” can see what most of us do not.  Jarmusch remains faithful to the poet Williams’s most famous tenet:  “No ideas but in things.”  Remaining grounded by a working life, much like William Carlos Williams, a practicing physician throughout his entire life, Paterson keeps a notebook by his side, collecting thoughts and bits of overheard conversation while continuously tuning into the world around him as he jots down free verse poetry.  Shot over a week’s time, identifying each new day, the film uses an Atom Egoyan-like structure from his film CALENDAR (1993), where a repeating overhead tableau camera shot opens each day of the week, as we find Paterson snuggled closely in bed with his wife Laura, Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani from My Sweet Pepper Land (2013) and 2015 Top Ten List #10 About Elly (Darbareye Elly), checking his watch for the time, sometime between 6 and 6:30 am, affectionately kissing his wife, as both start each day in each other’s arms.  It’s important to consider the quirky individuality of Laura, an excitable girl, who is like the perfect imaginary wife, always loving and devoted, yet consumed by weird idiosyncrasies that not only keep her occupied, but elated by each and every day, where she’s literally thrilled when he gets home from work each day, spending time in the kitchen preparing some culinary surprise, yet she’s fascinated by so many things on her own that it’s impossible for the relationship to grow stale.  Mind you, Paterson rarely shows any emotions or excitability, but remains passively contained, reserved, and within himself at all times, so it’s his wife that provides all the emotional outbursts, displaying a childlike enthusiasm for the world around her, whether it’s painting, decorating the house, learning to play the guitar, or making cupcakes for a farmer’s market, her upbeat demeanor expresses a woman who is not only satisfied and content, but filled with joy. 

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams | Poetry Foundation

Paterson reads this poem to his wife, at one point, finding joy in the everyday, like miniature haiku impressions, where this might be described as a film where nothing much happens, a stark contrast to the excessive violence that prevails in most American films, instead it’s filled with small moments that reflect the passing of each day, as Paterson sits at the breakfast counter each morning and eats his cereal before heading off to work, lunchbox in hand, as he walks to the bus depot, usually without a word to anyone.  Sitting in his bus before he starts his rounds, he scribbles lines of poetry in his notebook that appear onscreen as he speaks them out loud, finding beauty in small things and day-to-day moments, yet reflecting a casual grace in expressing a natural rhythm of time, where he seems to drift through life completely insulated by his observations, which are actually the work of Ron Padgett, an esteemed New York school poet, editor, and translator whose many honors include winning the William Carlos Williams Prize from the Poetry Society of America in 2014.  Each night, after dinner, Paterson walks his dog, a distinguished bulldog named Marvin who has an amusing habit when left alone during the day, as he runs out and attacks the mailbox stand, knocking it off kilter, where it is noticeably tilted and ajar by the time Paterson gets home from work.  This running joke between a man and his pet seems rooted in some unknown irritation known only to Marvin, who may object to Paterson’s habit of tying his leash to a post outside a bar he visits every night.  Inside he chats with Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley), a black bartender and familiar face, with photos of Paterson celebrities on the wall (including Lou Costello, Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, and Sam Moore of Sam & Dave), where Paterson sips on a single beer before heading home.  One night he witnesses a lover’s quarrel, where the rejected lover (William Jackson Harper) takes matters into his own hand, pulling out a gun, with Paterson quickly taking it out of his hand, discovering it’s only a plastic toy.  This is as violent as the film gets.  Walking home from work one day he encounters a young 10-year old girl (Sterling Jerins) waiting for her mother, discovering she’s also a poet, reading something from her “secret notebook” called Water Falls, that begins with the lines, “Water falls from the bright air / It falls like hair / Falling across a young girl’s shoulders.”  While the poem was actually written by Jarmusch, an English major at Columbia who was fascinated by the poetry of William Blake in Dead Man (1995), Paterson has a habit of meeting various poets along the way, where the viewer is not sure if this is happening only in his imagination, as each time it carries a dreamlike quality.  In the evening after dinner, while out walking his dog, he overhears a man spouting free verse in a neighborhood laundromat, Cliff Smith (Method Man), suggesting poetry is to be found in all walks of life, thriving in the hidden corners of our society.  Finally, sitting at his favorite spot in front of the Passaic Falls, a visiting Japanese poet, Masatoshi Nagase from MYSTERY TRAIN  (1989), appears as if out of a lingering daydream, revitalizing his creative spirit.  As the only white adult in a cast composed of black, Indian, Iranian, and Japanese actors, Paterson internalizes his role, living on the outer fringe of society, mixing with, yet keeping a comfortable distance in order to best maintain an artist’s gaze.