Buddhist Themes in Lucky

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Introduction: The Cinematic Hermeneutics of Mortality

John Carroll Lynch's directorial debut Lucky (2017), written by Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja, serves as both a cinematic love letter to Harry Dean Stanton—acting as his poignant artistic swan-song—and an uncompromising existential meditation on human aging. Set against the sun-scorched, dusty expanse of a small Arizona desert town, the narrative centers on Lucky, a ninety-year-old World War II Navy veteran living as a-lone-wolf in austere, self-reliant solitude.

While superficially framed around an old man's quiet eccentricities, the film functions as a rigorous philosophical exploration. It synthesizes core tenets of Buddhist philosophy—specifically impermanence, non-self, and luminous emptiness—with Martin Heidegger's phenomenological critique of human finitude. Rather than offering sentimental religious consolation or collapsing into cynical nihilism, Lucky constructs a secular theology of mortality: death is not an enemy to be conquered or denied, but the constitutive horizon that renders life authentic, urgent, and precious.

The Philosophical Nexus: Bridging East and West

The film orchestrates a continuous dialogue between two profound intellectual traditions:

• Buddhist Ontology: Articulated through the foundational principles of Anicca (conditioned transience), Anatta (the absence of an enduring metaphysical soul), Śūnyatā (interdependent emptiness), and Karuṇā (spontaneous, universal compassion).
• Heideggerian Phenomenology: Explored through the fundamental concepts of Dasein (human being-in-the-world), Sein-zum-Tode (resolute being-towards-death), Jemeinigkeit (the non-transferable mineness of mortality), and Eigentlichkeit (authentic existence emancipated from the illusions of the public crowd).

Rather than treating these frameworks as mutually exclusive doctrines, Lucky demonstrates their shared insight: human suffering stems from the desperate attempt to freeze fluid reality into static monuments of permanence.

Impermanence (Anicca) and the Dissolution of Daily Routine

Routine as a Defense Against Flux

Lucky organizes his life around an unwavering sequence of mechanical, solitary rituals:

• Performing five daily yoga stretches ("sun salutations") upon waking on his living room floor.
• Drinking warm milk, lighting his first cigarette of the day, and meticulously grooming his weathered face.
• Walking into town along the dusty road to complete crossword puzzles at Joe's diner.
• Watching daytime game shows (The Price is Right) alone in his living room chair.
• Visiting Elaine's bar every evening for bloody marys to shoot-the-breeze with local eccentrics and regulars.

In Buddhist philosophy, human beings instinctively construct habitual patterns to generate an artificial illusion of permanence (nicca) within a universe defined by ceaseless, universal flux (anicca). Viewed through Alfred Schütz's phenomenology of the everyday life-world (Lebenswelt), Lucky's daily circuit provides a predictable framework of typified habits that constructs a-facade of security. In metaphysical reality, this predictable structure is built-on-sand, vulnerable to the slightest disruption of biological homeostasis.

The Collapse as Ontological Shock

Lucky's protective equilibrium shatters in an instant when he collapses beside his kitchen counter while waiting for his coffee maker to brew. A comprehensive medical examination by Dr. Kaman (Ed Begley Jr.) reveals no organic pathology, vascular accident, or myocardial infarction; the physician offers only the inescapable diagnosis that Lucky is simply "getting old."

This sudden somatic betrayal shatters Lucky's presumption of bodily endurance. Like most human beings, he had grown accustomed to take-for-granted the effortless continuity of his physical health. The collapse serves as an ontological shock, stripping away the comfort of automatic habit and propelling him to an existential crossroads: he can either retreat into panicked denial or confront his impending mortality with clear-eyed lucidity.

President Roosevelt: The Allegory of Detachment

The universal reach of impermanence is mirrored in the subplot of Howard (David Lynch), an eccentric town resident mourning the sudden disappearance of his beloved pet: a hundred-year-old desert tortoise named President Roosevelt.

Howard's profound grief arises not because the animal died, but because it quietly walked away through an unlatched garden gate. The tortoise—an enduring cultural emblem of physical armor, longevity, and immobility—operates as a sharp allegory for possessive attachment and the suffering inherent in clinging to what cannot be owned. Howard's attempt to draft a legally binding will leaving his entire estate to the runaway tortoise reflects humanity's comical, desperate impulse to impose permanent institutional frameworks onto transient creatures that belong only to the wild openness of nature.

Non-Self (Anatta) and Emptiness (Śūnyatā): Transcending Nihilism

The Rejection of the Eternal Soul

During a nighttime gathering at Elaine's bar, Paulie (James Darren) attempts to comfort the patrons by declaring that "friendship is essential to the soul." Lucky cuts in sharply, shouting: "It doesn't exist... the soul!" When Paulie asks incredulously whether he means friendship, Lucky bellows: "The soul!"

Lucky's vehement repudiation mirrors the core Buddhist doctrine of Anatta (Non-Self). In contrast to Western Cartesian and theological paradigms that postulate an immortal, indivisible ego (res cogitans), Buddhism asserts that individual identity is an impermanent, interdependent assembly of physical and mental aggregates (skandhas): form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. As explored in Constructs of the Mind-Unmasking Consciousness in East and West, deconstructing the substantial soul is not a symptom of misanthropy; it represents an uncompromising refusal to take refuge in metaphysical fictions.

The Bar Monologue: From Void to Śūnyatā

The intellectual climax of the film occurs when Lucky addresses the assembled patrons at Elaine's bar, delivering a raw meditation on cosmic transience:

"Everything's gonna go away. You, you, you, me, this bar, everything. Into nothingness. And all of it will be left with nothing... It's all gonna vanish. There's nothing you can do about it."

To a conventional listener, this speech resembles bleak nihilistic despair. Yet the narrative transfigures this confrontation into the Mahāyāna Buddhist realization of Śūnyatā (emptiness), formulated systematically by Nāgārjuna. In Madhyamaka philosophy, emptiness does not signify a black hole of annihilation or cynical meaninglessness. Rather, it denotes that all entities are devoid of inherent, independent self-existence (svabhāva). Because nothing exists in isolation, everything exists in radical, mutual interdependence (pratītyasamutpāda).

When Lucky recognizes that worldly forms inevitably dissolve, he realizes that phenomena do not merely vanish-into-thin-air into meaningless vacuum; rather, their dissolution reveals the shared fabric of existence.

When a shaken Elaine asks in distress, "What do you do with that?", Lucky pauses, softens his posture, looks into her eyes, and delivers the transformative insight: "You smile."

This simple reply marks the transition from existential terror to Tathātā (suchness)—a luminous, joyful affirmation of reality as it is, echoing the courageous revolt of Albert Camus. Once the exhausting burden of preserving an illusory ego is relinquished, death is emptied of its sting.

Heideggerian Phenomenology: Death as the Individualizing Horizon

Dasein and Everyday Inauthenticity

In Being and Time (1927), Martin Heidegger conducts an existential analytic of human existence, designated as Dasein ("being-there"). Heidegger observes that in the average routines of everyday life (Alltäglichkeit), human beings typically surrender their autonomy to the collective public mindset—what he terms "the They" (das Man).

Within this social consensus, death is treated as the-elephant-in-the-room: an awkward, distant reality that happens vaguely to other people at some undefined future date. By domesticating mortality into an abstract statistical fact, the individual evades the terrifying realization of personal finitude.

Prior to his fall, Lucky inhabited his own disciplined version of this everydayness. His clockwork schedule functioned as a psychological shield keeping death at an intellectual distance. The sudden collapse ruptures this insulation, unleashing authentic Heideggerian Angst (existential anxiety)—an ontological tremor analyzed also by Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre. Unlike ordinary fear, which targets a specific environmental danger, Angst discloses the utter groundlessness (Abgrund) and radical contingency of existence.

Sein-zum-Tode and Jemeinigkeit

Heidegger establishes that death possesses three distinct phenomenological properties:

• Insuperability (Unüberholbar): Mortality is an unconditional horizon that consciousness cannot outrun or negotiate away.
• Non-relationality (Unbezüglich): When confronting death, all external social titles, family allegiances, and material possessions fall silent; the individual must face the abyss entirely alone.
• Mineness (Jemeinigkeit): No one can undergo another person's death on their behalf. Mortality belongs uniquely and inalienably to the singular subject.

Confronting death compels Lucky to face-the-music: he cannot delegate his dying to anyone else, nor can he indefinitely defer the reckoning. Recognizing that his remaining time is finite strips away his reflexive bitterness. Instead of isolating him, the realization of Jemeinigkeit softens his defenses, opening him to genuine warmth, authentic listening, and empathetic communion with his fellow townspeople.

The Philosophical Synthesis: Where Zen Meets Heidegger

The narrative architecture of Lucky culminates in a profound convergence of Eastern Buddhist ontology and Western existential phenomenology:

• The Nature of Ultimate Reality: Where Mahāyāna Buddhism identifies Anicca (universal transience) and Śūnyatā (empty interdependence), Heideggerian thought identifies human finitude and Das Nichts (the Nothing). In the film, this appears as the silent expanse of the desert and Lucky's diligent search in the dictionary for the definition of "Realism."
• The Ontology of the Self: Buddhism articulates Anatta (the self as an illusory aggregate of changing skandhas), while Heidegger articulates Jemeinigkeit (the singular self individualized through the ownership of death). In the film, this crystallizes in Lucky's bar confrontation: "The soul doesn't exist!"
• The Existential Rupture: Buddhism diagnoses Upādāna (possessive clinging producing existential anguish, dukkha), while phenomenology diagnoses Angst (the shattering of everyday complacency disclosing finitude). In the film, this rupture is dramatized by Lucky's sudden, unprovoked physical fall beside his coffee pot.
• The Transformative Resolution: Buddhism culminates in Tathātā (joyful acceptance of suchness) and Karuṇā (universal compassion), while existentialism culminates in Eigentlichkeit (authentic, resolute living). In the film, this finds expression when Lucky sings Volver, Volver at a child's birthday fiesta and offers his luminous answer: "You smile."

The Desert Climax and the Fourth Wall

In the closing sequence, Lucky walks back into the vast, open desert. He pauses beside towering saguaro cacti—silent botanical monuments that have endured harsh desert winds and scorching sun for centuries.

Lucky stops, turns toward the camera, and gazes directly into the lens. He offers a gentle, knowing smile to the audience before turning around and walking toward the distant horizon.

This final cinematic gesture unifies Heideggerian authenticity with Zen satori:

• Heideggerian Authenticity: Lucky no longer runs from his finitude. He assumes complete ownership of his mortal existence, walking resolutely toward the horizon without false consolations.
• Zen Liberation: His direct smile signals the enlightenment of non-attachment. Because there was never an isolated ego to protect from annihilation, death cannot conquer him. In accepting nothingness, he becomes entirely at home in the luminous suchness of the world.

🎴 Interactive Web Practice (Comprehension Check)

Resonant Notes

The following notes in the vault share direct thematic, ontological, and existential connections with Lucky and its philosophical synthesis of Buddhist ontology and existential phenomenology:

🔴 Buddhist Ontology, Emptiness & Non-Self

• Nāgārjuna — Formulated the foundational Madhyamaka philosophy of Śūnyatā (emptiness), demonstrating that emptiness is not nihilistic nothingness, but the absence of independent, separate self-existence (svabhāva). This directly underpins Lucky's realization that vanishing into the void is a reason not for despair, but for smiling equanimity.
• Stephen Batchelor — Batchelor's framework of secular Buddhism—articulated in Buddhism Without Beliefs—mirrors Lucky's refusal of supernatural dogmas, reincarnation, or an eternal soul, championing instead an agnostic, grounded embrace of mortal finitude and immediate presence.
• The Dhammapada — The classic Theravāda verses on impermanence (anicca), the non-substantiality of the self (anatta), and vigilance toward death parallel Lucky's awakening from the passive slumber of mechanical routine into authentic, mindful awareness.
• Tibetan Wheel of Life — The traditional depiction of the Lord of Death (Yama) holding the entire cycle of saṃsāra visually encapsulates the film's core thesis: all worldly routines, attachments, and organic forms exist within the enclosing horizon of impermanence and mortality.
• Constructs of the Mind-Unmasking Consciousness in East and West — Deconstructs the Western Cartesian ego into fluid, impermanent psychological aggregates, echoing Lucky's passionate repudiation of the soul during his argument with Paulie at Elaine's bar.
• Epistemology of Preference-Avijjā, Māna, and the Emptiness of Aesthetic Taste in Buddhist Philosophy — Analyzes how ego-attachment (māna) and ignorance (avijjā) construct personal defenses against groundlessness, matching Lucky's initial reliance on rigid rituals before his collapse.

🟡 Heideggerian Phenomenology & Existential Finitude

• Martin Heidegger — Lucky's physical collapse and subsequent existential awakening directly track the analytic of Dasein in Being and Time. The fall shatters the complacency of everyday inauthenticity (das Man), plunging Lucky into Angst and forcing him into an authentic orientation of Sein-zum-Tode (Being-towards-Death).
• Søren Kierkegaard — Kierkegaard's exploration of existential anxiety (Angst) as the dizziness of freedom when confronting the abyss parallels Lucky's initial ontological disorientation after his bodily collapse, before his dread matures into resolute acceptance.
• Jean-Paul Sartre — Lucky's refusal to seek refuge in comforting theological illusions or bad faith (mauvaise foi) reflects Sartre's existential principle that human consciousness must bravely confront its own nothingness (le néant) and live without metaphysical guarantees.
• Schopenhauerian Pessimism — Arthur Schopenhauer's synthesis of Eastern metaphysics and Western philosophy—specifically the recognition of existence as suffering (dukkha) driven by craving—parallels Howard's grief over his escaped tortoise, President Roosevelt, as an allegory of attachment and loss.
• Time as Change — Explores the metaphysical reality of temporal flux, affirming that time is not an abstract linear container but the irreversible, physical transformation of matter and organic bodies, experienced somatically by Lucky in his ninetieth year.

🟢 The Absurd, Everyday Routine & The Life-World

• Albert Camus — Lucky serves as an elderly, desert-dwelling incarnation of Camus's Absurd Hero. In responding to the ultimate vanishing of all things with a serene smile, Lucky enacts the conclusion of The Myth of Sisyphus—revolting against nihilism not through despair or religious hope, but through joyful, lucid defiance of the void.
• Alfred Schütz (1899–1959) — Schütz's phenomenological sociology of the everyday life-world (Lebenswelt) illuminates how Lucky's rigid daily routines (diner crosswords, television game shows, bar chatter) function as typified habits shielding consciousness from the fundamental anxiety of mortality.
• Henri Bergson — Bergson's distinction between homogeneous, spatialized clock time and authentic lived duration (la durée) mirrors Lucky's temporal evolution—transitioning from the mechanical scheduling of daily tasks to the rich, qualitative stillness of the desert sunset.
• The Existential Paradox of Annie Hall's Opening Monologue — Woody Allen's neurotic defense rituals and jokes against mortality offer an urban tragicomic foil to Lucky's austere, desert-tempered acceptance; both anatomize how mundane habits serve as fragile screens against somatic dissolution.

🟣 Core Lexical Syllabus & Applied Metaphoric Expressions

• swan-song — Serves as the poignant real-world and cinematic swan song for veteran actor Harry Dean Stanton, whose final leading performance functions as an authentic artistic testament to mortality, non-self (Anatta), and secular equanimity before his death in 2017.
• a-lone-wolf — Characterizes Lucky's austere, self-reliant existence in the high desert of Arizona, living as a lone wolf whose disciplined solitude and refusal of conventional social dependencies mirror the solitary renunciation praised in Theravāda Buddhist texts like The Dhammapada.
• shoot-the-breeze — Captures the evening rituals at Elaine's bar where Lucky gathers with local eccentrics to shoot the breeze, demonstrating how everyday casual banter (Alltäglichkeit) operates in Alfred Schütz's phenomenology as a typified social ritual shielding the mind from existential groundlessness.
• a-facade — Illustrates how Lucky's rigid daily circuit (morning yoga, diner crossword puzzles, game shows) functions as a facade of domestic order designed to conceal somatic decline and defend consciousness against the destabilizing flux of universal impermanence (Anicca).
• built-on-sand — Embodies the central Buddhist insight that any illusion of permanent stability (nicca) or independent ego (res cogitans) is fundamentally built on sand, destined to crumble the moment biological aging or an unexpected physical collapse shatters the unreflective natural attitude.
• take-for-granted — Demonstrates how ordinary consciousness tends to take physical health for granted until an unexpected somatic fall acts as an ontological shock, forcing the individual out of passive habituation into Heideggerian Angst and authentic existential evaluation.
• crossroads — Represents the critical existential crossroads Lucky reaches following his sudden kitchen collapse, where he must choose between clinging to panicked denial or leaning into the Heideggerian resolve of Sein-zum-Tode (Being-towards-Death) and Buddhist detachment.
• vanish-into-thin-air — Reframes the inevitable dissolution of worldly phenomena: Lucky realizes that while human lives, friendships, and physical spaces eventually vanish into thin air, this void is not cause for nihilistic despair, but the luminous realization of interdependent emptiness (Śūnyatā).
• the-elephant-in-the-room — Diagnoses the collective denial of mortality in polite society ("the They" / das Man), where terminal aging and death remain the elephant in the room—an undeniable universal reality that everyday public discourse actively sanitizes and avoids confronting.
• face-the-music — Symbolizes the Heideggerian demand of Jemeinigkeit (mineness): Lucky must face the music regarding his non-transferable mortality, transforming dread into serene presence by performing Volver, Volver and smiling directly into the horizon of the unknown.

References

Lucky - Official Trailer