We begin with stars, with cosmos.
We don’t see our hero, elderly World War II veteran Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth in the role of a lifetime), right away, but we see the exterior of his house. We hear a noise as he falls to the floor of his kitchen inside his house, but only because we are an audience for a movie, and the movie’s sound design is made for us to pick up on such cues. But the next door neighbor is oblivious.
Down at the neighborhood bar, people are waiting up for Alvin. Alvin is rarely if ever late, despite only being able to walk with the use of two canes, and so one of the gang decides to check in on Alvin, and it is revealed he has suffered a serious fall.
Life is quite precarious. It is possible, in this world, especially for those who are vulnerable, to fall through the cracks, to suffer in silence, unnoticed, and, in the event of death, maybe even die unmourned.
Alvin gets word that his estranged brother, Lyle, has suffered a stroke, and may not be around much longer. Alvin and Lyle have hated each other for years, the cause of this animosity long forgotten, and now Alvin feels the need to make amends, to patch things up before it’s too late, before everyone is dead and gone. Alvin is poor, he cannot legally drive, and he doesn’t even own an automobile to break the law if he was inclined to do so, and so he decides to drive from his home in Iowa to his brother’s home in Wisconsin-a journey of 260 miles-on his riding lawnmower.
Alvin is a stubborn man. He sees his doctor after his fall, and has little interest in taking advice, or getting anymore treatments or procedures. Alvin senses the presence of the reaper, and he no longer sees the point of submitting to the will of his healthcare provider. Alvin’s been to war, raised a family, lost a family to his own alcoholism, and now is only connected to his grown middle-aged daughter Rose (flawlessly played by Sissy Spacek) who was declared mentally incompetent in a court of law and lost custody of her kids after a tragic house fire for which she was held responsible. Both father and daughter tried to raise families, and ultimately lost them.
During an evening thunderstorm, Alvin sits in his living room, while the the shadows of rain pouring down the front window crawl across his anguished face, like amplified tears of the very soul, in a possible homage to the 1967 movie version of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, in which a similar scene plays out involving a psychopathic murderer contemplating his impending execution. Alvin isn’t exactly a serial killer, but he does carry significant guilt from his World War II service, a guilt which he has held onto for decades without any kind of relief. We don’t know this until much later in the film, but I mention it here, because, well, the scene takes on a new significance once you know that . . . and if you’ve never seen this movie before . . . spolier?
Sorry, but I shouldn’t say too much more. I’m not sure how popular The Straight Story is among Lynch’s films, but it’s a journey you will be grateful for taking. The journey takes many sharp turns, and if your primary understanding of Lynch’s work comes from movies like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Mulholland Dr. you are in for a shocker of a different kind. Yes, this is a G-rated film, so, yes, you could watch it with just about anyone, including children if you got some of those. But . . . dammnit, you really need to see this one. Although it is not my favorite Lynch work, it might be the one I would absolutely recommend above all others. It is firmly set in the real world-excepting maybe one scene of mechanical comedy-with not a trace of Lynch’s surreal supernatural weirdness. As much as I love wild fantasy, a movie set firmly in unforgiving, unadorned reality has increased value in this era of nonstop comic book spectacle, rampant online misinformation, and endless lies emanting from authoritarian governments around the world. The Straight Story does not exist to distract you, to anesthetize you, or to whip you into a frenzy against a scapegoat. It exists to get you to pay close attention to a vulnerable human being making a profound series of existential choices as he nears the end of his life.
The DVD has no chapter skips. You can skip back to the very beginning. But you can’t skip ahead. (This was also done for the Mulholland Dr. DVD release-but we’ll get to that one later.) You’ve got to take this ride from the beginning, with no interruptions, no distractions-I mean, you can pause the DVD, if you want, if you need a piss break or something like that, but the film is intended to be watched in its entirety, and all in one sitting. If you can, do It.
One last spoiler: the film ends in stars, cosmos.
