Raise your hand if you’ve never fantasized about what you’d do if you won the lottery. Uh, huh. Very good. Okay, and you four people who actually raised your hands are some lying sonsabitches! This exquisitely simple little gem from John Ealer portrays everyone’s idle fantasy nearly come to life…only to collapse into the type of lottery winner’s nightmare everyone’s heard about and secretly fears. “The Lottery Ticket” gets rolling when the self-centered husband of a couple whose marriage is on life support realizes that his wife’s lottery ticket has matched the first five numbers. Before the dumbfounded husband checks the sixth and final number, however, he decides he and the missus should figure out what they’ll do with their millions before the pressure of actually having the money distorts their decision making process. Bad move. Like a white-gloved hand run across the top of that bookcase where no one really looks anyway, the potential of winning millions brings to light and then magnifies every single flaw, omitted detail and annoyance in the couple’s teetering marriage. By the time the husband checks that sixth and final number, winning or losing the lottery’s anticipated millions has been rendered utterly meaningless. Based on an Anton Chekov short story and shot in one long, continuous take, “The Lottery Ticket” is a very good and very grim modern day parable which takes the timeless deadly sin of greed and shows us how effortlessly it can totally destroy.
