The Straight Story

Richard Farnsworth was nominated for best actor in a leading role, and lost. Perhaps that was appropriate. There is a certain falsehood in the word "performance". He wears the sorrow and the joy of some 70 odd years on his face. Unlike many movies about or featuring elders, the film doesn't presume him to be some ubiquitous fountain of wisdom. He is honest, and whatever wisdom he has was hard earned. The worst thing about being old he tells a somewhat hyper cyclist he meets on the road is "remembering when you were young". Maybe a better accolade for Farnsworth is people's inability to describe how he is in the film. An expression, that seems to emulate from whatever soul human beings have, is worn on his face. It says, and affects, more then is feasible to describe.

There was I recall surprise at the kindness of this film. Not just to Straight, but to the strangers he meets on the journey. They are, surprisingly for Lynch, not only sane, but ones I would be glad to run into if I just happened to be travelling on lawnmower. Lynch's fans would recognize that, although seemingly the opposite of the likes of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, The Straight Story comes from the same place, the same wordless search for the truth, whether in ugliness, beauty or kindness. In one scene that will be remembered for a very long time: Straight sits with a stranger. They discuss drinking, and from there, the war. There is no music, just brief sounds of battle, but no visuals. Both men experience an unexpected outpour that can only come adventitiously. He remembers those young boys back in the field "I dream of their faces. Sometimes, it's not even my buddies, sometimes its German boys. We were shooting moon-face boys at the end of the war. Every year I live is a year more then they've had". Quietly, this scene dwarfs Spielberg's entire Saving Private Ryan, and Lynch.... I was going to say does it, but rather, he lets it happen with the melancholy in an old man's eyes.

Search if you must but you won't find another film quite like this one. The closest I can think of is Wim Wender's Paris, Texas, another seemingly unaffected film. The elements of The Straight Story are indeed superlative. Angelo Badalementi's score, particularly the twangy violin, soft acoustic guitar of Laurens Walking, is cleansing, mournful, understated. Freddie Francis's photography is breathtaking, but somehow, never overpowers the film. I would call it a masterpiece. But what Lynch and his collaborators have accomplished is a form of cinematic purity that transcends such pedestrian praise. It gains an added measure of poignancy when you consider that Farnsworth took his own life last year in the face of terminal cancer. In the film, a stranger offers to give him a ride to his brother's place. He smiles, thankful and says "I am gonna finish this one my own way". I could never tell exactly why, but his final gaze up at the stars is one of the great moments in cinema.


Straight To The Heart   July 28, 2006
El Lagarto (Ambler, PA)
12 out of 17 found this review helpful

The Straight Story is film paradise; repeated viewings will only make you like it more. It is an extraordinary work of art that is as surprising as it is richly rewarding. If ever there was a case of "less is more," this is it.

The story, (both bizarre and fact-based), is almost Shaker-esque in its simplicity. Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old man in failing health from Laurens, Iowa, rides a garden tractor 320 miles to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin in hopes of making peace with his dying, estranged brother Lyle. On the way, the incredibly slow way, he meets nice people and we learn a great deal about him. (Imagine pitching that to a producer!)

Retired stuntman Richard Farnsworth plays Alvin to perfection. The hard years are visible; his craggy face resembles a well-worn baseball glove, although there's sparkle, even mischief, in his eyes. When Alvin smiles it's the smile of a man who has seen all the hardship life has to offer and still chooses to embrace it. Straight is laconic but unlike most characters, every word matters and reverberates with authenticity.

The pacing in this picture is faultless, through vignettes played out in chance encounters we come to understand Straight and the complex trials he's endured, as well as his need to make amends with brother Lyle. These small scenes are played out on a vast, sumptuous visual canvas of American farmland, gigantic John Deere harvesters cut broad swathes as Alvin put-puts in the foreground.

The reliable Angelo Badalamenti provides a lovely, non-intrusive score while Sissy Spacek shines as Alvin's daughter. But the truly stunning thing about The Straight Story is that it was directed by David Lynch, demonstrating once and for all that Lynch is capable of creating movie magic without resorting to dwarfs talking backwards and dogs dining on severed ears. This is a profoundly humanistic and gentle film that moves with slow confidence - no cheap tricks. For me, knowing that Lynch made The Straight Story actually improves all his other films after the fact.


Simply beautiful   August 7, 2000
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

First of all, it's an absolute crime that Richard Farnsworth lost to Kevin Spacey for best actor.

We shouldn't be all that shocked that David Lynch made this movie. After all, remember, he did make The Elephant Man, and half of Blue Velvet, including the ending, is pure Norman Rockwell. What's shocking is that The Straight Story didn't get more attention, what with everyone bewailing Hollywood's hand in our country's "moral decline." On that subject, my favorite line in the film comes after Alvin careens down the hill. A woman asks if he's afraid to be out on the road alone because "there are weird people everywhere these days." Weird people, indeed. The woman has listened to too many talk shows and Republicans. The country is falling apart, right? So why is it that everywhere Alvin goes he meets kind people, generous people, warm people? Everyone in America should see this movie and make themselves believe in it.

I wanted to respond to one reviewer from Lumberton, NC who said that Blue Velvet ("absolute garbage" as he called it) was about his hometown. All billboards and commercials in BV identify the town as Lumberton, USA, and it's clearly meant to be a kind of mythic place somewhere in Lynch's native Northwest. Blue Velvet took Rockwell's idealized, propagandized, America to task, but The Straight Story gives us real people in a real place. It's a beautiful movie. Watch it as soon as possible.


A straightforward story honestly told.   January 18, 2004
Robin Benson
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

A wonderful gentle movie that I'm still enjoying after several viewings. Clearly Mr Lynch is not afraid to experiment and deliver something different and this is so unlike his previous output. Judging from some of the reviews this is not a movie for everyone but fortunately the one or two stars are in a minority. Most of the others, like me, appreciated the slow moving (just like five mph Deere mower) unfolding of Alvin's big adventure and the folks he met. Where else other than the Midwest, where honesty comes as standard, could this story take place.

There is so much to enjoy! Angelo Badalamenti creates the perfect bluegrass style theme music, cinematographer Freddie Francis captures the gorgeous colors of the Midwest, the actors and especially Richard Farnsworth sparkle. Great lines, too, Alvin says to a hitchhiker, who has run away from home and shares a meal with him around the campfire, "A warm bed in a house sounds a mite better than eating a hot dog on a stick with an old geezer travelling on a lawn mower".

The 'Straight Story' is a little gem and I bet I'll still be enjoying its warmth and honesty for a long time.