A strange sight, this strange man in his John Deere Lawn Tractor making his strange way along the Iowan highways. Behind him, a makeshift tractor trailer full of gasoline and hot dogs. Before him, 240 miles of road. Going at a maximum speed of five miles per hour, it should take Alvin Straight about six weeks to make the journey from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin. Surely, he could make the trip in a single afternoon if he drove a car instead of a lawn mower. But at 73, Alvin isn’t as healthy as he once was: his legs are partially crippled; his lungs bursting with the early stages of emphysema; his eyesight not so sharp anymore. With his driver’s license revoked, his lawn mower remains his sole mode of transport. But journey he must. At the other end of the road awaits his brother—the same brother he hasn’t spoken with in ten years. A decade ago these brothers had a falling out. What happened, what was said remains a mystery. But with his brother having recently suffered a stroke, Alvin realizes he might not have much longer to make things right with him.
So goes David Lynch’s
The Straight Story (1999), a film of quiet, illuminative power and beauty. Based on the real-life story of Alvin Straight, the film is part road movie, part melancholic drama about life and old age. This G-rated story of steadfast love and compassion may seem a strange fit for Lynch, that old
enfant terrible of American underground cinema, famous for such bizarre, oneiric, and explicit masterpieces as
Eraserhead (1977),
Blue Velvet (1986), and the cult classic television show
Twin Peaks. But through gorgeous, meditative widescreen cinematography, a penetrating screenplay (Roger Ebert praised the naturalistic dialogue as being reminiscent of Hemingway), and a career-defining lead performance by Richard Farnsworth—himself terminally ill with bone cancer while the film was shot—
The Straight Story transforms a newspaper front-page oddity into a stunning Christian parable.
8/10
