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The Straight Story (21-May-1999)
Director: David Lynch Writers: John Roach; Mary Sweeney Music: Angelo Badalamenti Producers: Neal Edelstein; Mary Sweeney Keywords: Drama, Road Trip True story of Alvin Straight, an elderly WWII veteran, who drove a lawnmower 400 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin to see his estranged brother who had recently suffered a stroke. Endearing, life-affirming odyssey through America which is a departure for David Lynch, whose sympathies normally lie with the bizarre and perverse.
[watch trailer]
REVIEWS Review by Walter Frith (posted on 9-Jun-2007) The man who
has brought audiences his very unique directing style with such daring
and bizzaro films as 'Eraserhead' (1977), 'The Elephant Man' (not so
bizzaro) (1980), 'Blue Velvet' (1986), 'Wild at Heart' (1990), 'Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)', and 'Lost Highway' (1997) has now
decided to embark on a real life subject with docile characters, no
insanity contained in his subject matter, and a dose of what it feels
like to take your grand parents to the movies in this day and age. A
real comfort with safe, tame and extremely likable aspects. Director
David Lynch is getting almost no recognition (and that's a shame) for
'The Straight Story', a wonderful and low key film that is the most
fondly remembered of its kind since 1983's 'Tender Mercies' which
wasn't so much a motion picture as it was a series of still photographs
brought to life through the miracle of characterization. That's what
'The Straight Story' looks and feels like. And it shrinks the marvel of
the big screen motion picture into a compact memory of finely wrought
images and the story of a simple man who really did exist. Based on a
true story, in 1994, a 73 year old man named Alvin Straight (who died
in 1996), drove his lawn mower some 300 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin
to see his brother who has suffered from a stroke and Alvin wants to
make peace with him since the two men last spoke because there has been
some bad blood between the two of them. The film begins in Alvin's home
town in Iowa. Alvin is poverty stricken. He lives in a small run down
shack with his simple minded daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek). One day he
falls in the kitchen of his home and needs to see the doctor. Alvin
suffers a series of physical ailments. He has bad vision. His hips are
shot etc., etc. He can't afford treatment and tells the doctor that.
Alvin then needs to walk with two canes instead of the doctor
recommended walker (he can't afford that either). Upon receiving the
news that this brother has had a stroke, Alvin under takes a project
that no one (not even the audience) knows about until it completed. He
fixes up his John Deere lawn mower and welds a trailer like contraption
to the rear that will carry his supplies and provide his shelter,
including a place to sleep. His first trek is unsuccessful. He gets a
few miles from town but then has to come back. He buys a better lawn
mower and then takes off for a bumpy but successful go of it. Alvin has
many encounters on his trip. One night after parking for the day and
relaxing, Alvin meets a young female runaway and invites her to spend
some time with him by his camp fire. He is roasting wieners on a stick
and offers the lady one. She asks him if he's afraid to be an old man
at night by the wayside with no one around. Alvin tells her that as a
war veteran, if he could survive the trenches, he can't be afraid of
anything. They strike up a conversation where Alvin does most of the
talking and he tells of how his daughter Rose had a tragedy in her life
that saw the removal of her children from her home because authorities
thought she was a danger to them because of her Forrest Gump/Rain Man
personality and acts of the mind. Alvin meets college kids and a group
of ordinary, middle aged folks. He is almost killed when he loses
control of his lawn mower while rolling down a steep hill. The town's
folks find out about his trek to see his sibling and they help Alvin
fix his lawn mower, give him lodging and even offer to drive him the
rest of the way. Alvin accepts their help except for the part about
being driven to his destination. He wants to do that himself. The film
has little or no music score. It looks extremely easy to make but
that's the deception. This is an extremely difficult film to pull off
because the subject matter is so ordinary that unless it is told in a
simple fashion it will look like more than it really is. There are no
fancy camera tricks, no sharp, quick witted editing flashes, and
virtually no technical marvels at all. Richard Farnsworth's Oscar
worthy performance is the best thing the film has to offer. While Alvin
is something of an enigma to behold, Farnsworth portrays him as a wise,
level headed man who never gets angry and while the performance is one
track for the most part, it's done with the quality of making those who
see the film, want to adopt Alvin as a foster grand parent because he
hasn't let life get him down. 'The Straight Story' is just the kind of
slapping down many of us need in our homogenized, digitized and
computerized worlds of high technology with cell phones, DVD players,
fax, e-mails and other gadgets that make society seem artificial as we
forget where are roots are. Alvin never lets us forget who we really
should be at certain moments in our lives. Extraordinary! Visit FILM
FOLLOW-UP by Walter Frith
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