David Lynch's The Straight Story moves at the pace of its two main characters: a 73-year-old man with busted hips and a 1966 John Deere riding lawnmower in serious need of a new drive belt. The man, the mower and the movie crawl along at seven miles per hour.
Make no mistake, The Straight Story is a slow-moving vehicle. Then again, Vivaldi's Concerto for Guitar in D Major is a slow piece of music. Lynch's film is every bit as beautiful as the Italian composer's music. In fact, it's arguably the most beautiful film, both visually and emotionally, that popped into and out of theaters in 1999.
Lynch, who baffled many viewers with his previous film Lost Highway, has found the right road--the straight and narrow highway, if you will--in this delicate and decent movie. It's a simple tale, a sparse fable about Alvin Straight who, at 73 years old, rode his lawnmower 260 miles to see his estranged brother. That alone sounds like a pure Lynchian invention, but this is a stranger-than-fiction true story.
Straight made the trip on his John Deere in 1994 because he couldn't drive and didn't trust bus drivers. So, pulling a home-built trailer and a cooler full of braunschweiger and hot dogs, he traveled the two-lane highways from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin. There's a lot at stake in the journey--more than just being blown off the side of the road by passing semi-trucks. Alvin's brother Lyle has had a stroke and this might be the last time the two men have a chance to reconcile their 10-year split (anger, vanity and liquor have come between them). As Alvin says, "The trip is a hard swallow of my pride."
It's also pretty rough on him physically. He's got circulation problems, emphysema and possibly diabetes. Each time he gets on and off the lawnmower, it's a hard swallow of pain.
The Straight Story is a portrait of one man's grit and determination, but it's also a testament to the generosity of the kind folks he meets along the route--not to mention those he helps in his own Good Samaritan way. In particular, there's a scene between Alvin and a young pregnant runaway that's especially poignant and unforgettable. In the hands of Lynch and screenwriter John Roach, the simple tale of an old man on a riding mower becomes an American adagio, a much-needed tonic for the espresso-souled world we live in.
The heart of the movie is, of course, Richard Farnsworth who at age 79 is playing a bit of a youngster here--a 73-year-old. I've always admired Farnsworth's low-key style of acting. In fact, his manner is so low-key, I'm loath to even call it "acting." It's more like "breathing and speaking naturally for the camera." Like fellow actor Wilfred Brimley, Farnsworth exudes from every pore that rare quality we used to call homespun common sense. One look at his time-worn features and I start thinking about old cowboys riding the range, the smell of well-oiled leather and the sound of a crackling campfire.
I first noticed Farnsworth about the same time the rest of America did, when he gave an Oscar-nominated performance in 1978's Comes a Horseman. But the grizzled old cowboy had been working in Hollywood for forty years before that as a stuntman for stars like Roy Rogers and Gary Cooper. His early screen appearances included billing like "Stagecoach Driver" and "Third Cowpoke From the Left," but once he hit his prime, his plain-spoken, no-frills acting seemed to fit his roles like an old leather glove. He's got a flat voice that seldom varies its inflection, but just listening to him puts me at ease, like sitting in the lap of a grandfather telling old war stories.
In fact, in The Straight Story Alvin does tell a harrowing war story while sitting in a bar with a fellow World War Two veteran. I dare you to walk away from that scene dry-eyed.
While the whole of the movie revolves around Farnsworth's deeply-felt performance, The Straight Story would only be half as resonant if it weren't for Lynch's eye guiding the camera. It's a hard swallow to believe that such a G-rated Disney opus could come from the same man who brought us Dennis Hopper's ether-fueled rape scene (Blue Velvet) and a Wizard of Oz sex fable (Wild at Heart), not to mention the most famous body ever wrapped in plastic (Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks).
But Lynch succeeds to such a degree that I'm willing to call this the best film of his career. As the title implies, he plays it straight in this one and doesn't brandish his usual go-for-quirk style. Okay, okay, there are a couple of pure, Lynchian touches to be found--once, Alvin meets a hysterical woman motorist who has just hit her thirteenth deer in seven weeks; another time, a car-sized ear of corn passes him on the highway--but for the most part, the heart of the heartland is told in reverent, almost documentary tones.
Lynch has also surrounded himself with familiar crew members who join together to produce this near-flawless film. Freddie Francis' cinematography is as exquisite as his work in Dune and The Elephant Man and Angelo Badalamenti's music score is, bar none, the loveliest soundtrack of the past several years. Everything in this production combines to create a work of cinematic poetry--no matter how slow and deliberate the pace.
Drama - general DVD - The real-life odyssey of an Iowa farmer inspired this warm and gentle 1999 drama -- a love letter to America's heartland directe...More at Barnes and Noble
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