The odds are slim that you'll win big in any lottery, but odds are someone will hit the jackpot. And if it's you, what if all your dreams come true? It kind of depends on your dreams, which come from the kind of person you are.
Lucky is an absorbing, fascinating documentary on playing the odds American style from the Oscar-nominated director Jeff Blitz (Spellbound). The film touches on many things, starting with luck, predestination and fate. Some of the lottery winners interviewed for Lucky have remarkable stories indeed, including the suicidal impoverished man who decided to spend his bottom $3 on a ticket and won millions, or the married couple whose winning ticket resulted from a peculiar chain of circumstances. A math professor who struck the jackpot concluded, “Some forces are at work that make you win.”
In breezy animated asides, Lucky reminds us that lotteries were pervasive in early America—until they were banned in every state at the turn of the 20th century over moral concerns that remain valid: lotteries tend to exploit the fantasies of those who can least afford to gamble their slender incomes against such thin odds. Lucky follows an African-American woman who has spent over $50 a day for decades; the lottery has structured her life in pursuit of her jackpot dreams. Once she won $5,000. The money might have been better invested in an IRA.
After the '60s, the bets were on and it was every dreamer for himself in a society where the pressure to own the things money can buy grew only more heavy. And lotteries became one way for states to raise money without raising taxes. In recent decades millions of dollars have been exchanged for tickets purchased on a lark, in desperation or from the unconsidered notion that a financial windfall could purchase happiness or freedom.
Much of Lucky is devoted to particular people who won and while there are commonalities, they form a mixed impression. Winning allowed the family of Vietnamese boat people to quit their jobs at a meatpacker and devote themselves to gardening, cooking and their grandchildren. They are philosophical over the vagaries of fortune. On the other end of the spectrum, a small town firefighter compulsively spent his money on boats, cars, houses and 12,000 pairs of slacks. One of his brothers was arrested for conspiring to murder him for his money.
Big winners are inevitably subject to an instant media circus, followed by thousands of requests from strangers with daft investment schemes and hard luck stories. Some suffer from the envy of friends and family and feel excluded from the normal conversation of life. The math professor quickly put aside his material fantasies, pointing out that we most value the things we work hardest to receive. Probably the final word comes from an associate of the ill-fated, ostensibly lucky firefighter who spent himself into poverty: winning the lottery is like spreading Miracle Grow on your character flaws.
Lucky is out on DVD.
