Following the wild success of Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, the director’s second-ever feature film celebrates its first time release in the United States. Based on the titular poem from Gerald Stern’s book, Lucky Life, Chung’s film delivers just the lyrical quality one would expect from such an adaptation.
Every year, four friends meet up for a reunion at a North Carolina vacation house. At the beginning of Lucky Life, the newlyweds' Mark (Daniel O’Keefe) and Karen (Megan McKenna), the professor Alex (Richard Harvell), and the terminally-ill Jason (Kenyon Adams) convene at the beach house one last time before cancer takes Jason.
Although he brings a brightness to the gloomy circumstances, Jason’s sickness lingers in the air, dampening the mood like a wet blanket. The friends don’t directly address his cancer, but it underlies every scene and every action therein. Desperation lives in each kiss between Mark and Karen; emotions are regulated in Jason’s presence.
Lucky Life proceeds with the same subdued, grief-thickened air following Jason’s death. In one scene, Mark and Karen are building a crib. It’s maybe a year after the vacation; Karen is pregnant. Everything about the scene screams mundaneness, normalcy.
But the way Chung lays out the scene right after the beach house gathering, one can’t help but look at Mark and know exactly what he’s thinking: “Jason is dead. Jason is dead. Jason is dead.” Sure enough, right after they finish building, Mark says to Karen that he can’t remember what Jason’s face looked like. That, the film remarks, is the permeating nature of grief.
Chung’s film is a quiet exploration of mortality’s imprint on relationships. Its cryptic themes and slow pacing perhaps aren’t for the casual viewer, but it remains a thought-provoking film that begs varied interpretations. A good choice for library shelves spotlighting movie adaptations of books and literature, Lucky Life is a strong optional purchase for drama film collections.
Discover more titles for your film collection in our list of drama movies.