The Straight Story
The Straight Story: drama. Starring Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek
and Harry Dean Stanton. Cinematography by Freddie Francis. Music by Angelo
Badalamenti. Written by John Roach and Mary Sweeney. Directed by David
Lynch. Rated G. Now playing at Bay Area Theaters.
POSTHOC RATING: ****
There’s no swearing or violence in The Straight Story. No abrupt plunges into the dark heart of greed and selfishness. There are no flip ironies (though there are a couple of ironic moments). No one in fact even dies, though death hovers behind the faces of the old and the turning of the autumn leaves.
I’ve described what might sound like one of the dullest movies ever, but it isn’t. The Straight Story is possibly the most unusual movie ever made for a general audience. And it’s a wonderful work of poetry. And it’s directed by David Lynch, who’s made some of the most profoundly nightmarish films of our time.
Its story is a model of simplicity and though odd, is true in the way American stories are often both odd and true: in 1994 a retired Iowa farmer named Alvin Straight receives word that his brother Lyle has suffered a stroke. They haven’t spoke in ten years. Alvin, seventy-one, is losing his eyesight and can only walk with the aid of two canes. There are no buses to the Wisconsin town of Mt. Zion, where Lyle lives, 350 miles away.
So, Alvin figures, there’s only one thing he can do: hitch up a junky trailer to his tractor-mower and drive there. All 350 miles. Alone. Along the way he meets a pregnant runaway (Anastasia Webb), a commuter (Barbara Robertson) with the worse luck in the world where deer are concerned, young bicycle racers and other people, who, for the most part, aren’t anything more than they appear to be. To each he gives something of himself and they in turn, give something to him.
Yes, this is a five mile an hour road movie, a kind that’s never been seen before. It’s poetic and meditative and its homilies are simple and heartfelt. They’re heard so seldom now, they seem fresh. It’s a slow and rhythmic ode to an America often said to be lost, but maybe it’s only been driven from our consciousness by the imperialistic glare of urban culture. The Straight Story is a blessed reminder of this part of America.
The Straight Story is breathtakingly simple. It’s very tender and elegiac, but completely unforced, like it’s central character. So unforced, it feels like an act of revolt against the bludgeoning power of Hollywood movies. But this act of revolt uses a tiny tractor that creeps across the rolling, corn-yellow landscape (sometimes reminding me of John Ford in its images of Alvin riding across the face of the setting sun, an image both romantic and gently funny). The film is defiantly unhurried, thumbing its nose at our obsession for speed. It weaves its slow rhythms from the world Alvin lives in and rides through, which engenders an honestly calming effect. Its simple feelings are worn proudly, like badges of honor.
For director Lynch, machines are objects of awe and terror. But here the machine, a John Deere tractor/mower, becomes a chariot bearing its hero, not to battle, but to a quiet redemption, guided along by Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score that uses both modern and rustic elements and veteran cameraman Freddie Francis’ autumnal, sweeping images. I can’t remember the Midwest ever looking so beautiful.
Despite the steamy surreal atmosphere and brutal grotesqueries of his earlier work, there’s always been a meditative element to David Lynch’s direction and here he lets it flow and puts it in service of something quiet and simple. But not simplistic. Alvin’s journey is not only one of forgiveness and redemption, but also one of perseverance in the face of death. His brother’s travail has sparked life in him once again, just when he thought the spark was fading for good.
Alvin, beautifully played by Richard Farnsworth in his most leathery gentleman’s manner, finds little glory in growing old, except maybe the accumulation of experience and wisdom. “The worse part of bein’ old is rememberin’ when you were young,” he tells the bicycle racers who welcome him into their camp, but he doesn’t quite mean it. You can tell by the low-key envy with which he watches them that he’s thinking wistfully back on his own youth.
The film makes few slips: the aftermath of Alvin’s encounter with the commuter who kills deer feels like a forced punchline to a joke. And there’s a purely accidental, unintended allusion to The Blair Witch Project with the appearance of a tied-up bundle of sticks that mean something entirely different here. But these are only quibbles.
The ending is perfect. The brothers are united (Lyle is played by Harry Dean Stanton) in such a poetically simple fashion, that I sighed out loud. There’s a lot going on between these two, but the film doesn’t linger. As though respecting their privacy, it pulls away quietly, turning its camera to the starry night sky. There’s no need for us to know everything. It’s enough to know that Alvin at last finds his way to his brother’s loving gratitude and forgiveness.
I’ve always suspected there was a Boy Scout lurking behind David Lynch’s weird imagination (he was one as a youngster in Missoula, Montana). His previous films leave the impression of a wide-eyed teenager discovering evil and violence for the first time and both recoiling with horror and staring with fascination. Mel Brooks, (who produced Lynch’s 1980 The Elephant Man) once described him as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars.”
With this film David Lynch’s inner Jimmy Stewart Boy Scout has stood up and stepped out, with a bright and eager smile and the gift of this wonderful film in his hands. It retains his deadpan daffy humor (both an argument over farming implements and Alvin’s encounter with the luckless deer-killing motorist are sweet glimpses of the old Lynch), but makes a generous gift of his darkest secret: that underneath it all, he’s just a square. After decades of bludgeoning violence, glib cynicism and ten-ton ironies that the movies have thrown at us, I can’t think of a better gift.
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