David Lynch talks about The Straight Story

The Straight Story is a 1999 biographical road drama film directed by David Lynch. The film was edited and produced by Mary Sweeney, Lynch's longtime partner and collaborator. She co-wrote the script with John E. Roach. The film is based on the true story of Alvin Straight's 1994 journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) is an elderly World War II veteran who lives with his daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), a kind woman with an intellectual disability. When he hears that his estranged brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) has suffered a stroke, Alvin makes up his mind to go visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies. Because Alvin's legs and eyes are too impaired for him to receive a driving license, he hitches a trailer to his recently purchased thirty-year-old John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor, having a maximum speed of about 5 miles per hour (8.0 km/h) and sets off on the 240 miles (390 km) journey from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin.

Coming straight from his Eagle Scout’s heart, “The Straight Story” is David Lynch’s simplest, most straightforward and most mature film to date. The bizarre noir sensibility that has informed all of Lynch’s movies is nowhere to be found in this quiet, emotionally effective family tale of reconciliation.

Ever since “Wild at Heart,” which won the 1990 Cannes Palme d’Or, Lynch has stumbled with semi-successful, semi-coherent features that explored the perverse and the mysterious. This was last evident in “Lost Highway,” a return to form but a commercial failure. Favoring a gentle, starkly simple narrative and abandoning his surreal stylistic and thematic obsessions, Lynch has directed his most satisfyingly disciplined movie.

It’s almost irrelevant that “Straight Story” is based on actual events; Lynch has made a visionary film that ranks up there with his finest work, “Eraserhead” and “Blue Velvet.” A lyrical poem to America’s vast land and country folks, new pic is almost the opposite of Lynch’s explorations of sleazy urban milieus.

In the opening sequence, which recalls the beginning of “Blue Velvet,” Freddie Francis’ glorious camerawork tracks the vistas of a rustic small town, gliding over empty streets, white fences and wheat fields before resting on the face of a large elderly woman, Dorothy (Jane Galloway Heitz), who sunbathes in her yard while munching on cookies and drinking lemonade. It soon becomes clear that, unlike his previous pics, which created surreal, dreamlike worlds, this one will not penetrate ground level to disclose corrupt or deviant conduct.

Structured as a road movie, “The Straight Story” refreshingly lacks the genre’s requisite thrills and comic relief. With only three or four stops along the way, and a minimal number of secondary roles, scripters John Roach and Mary Sweeney deftly construct a character who can be described as a gentleman cowboy of the old school, a Westerner who lives by a personal code of ethics.

Pic differs from Lynch’s previous efforts, most of which (including TV’s “Twin Peaks”) were coming-of-age sagas about naive adolescents forced to face a dark reality. Here, narrative takes the p.o.v. of an ailing man who’s determined to see his dying brother after a 10-year separation that was the result, he says, of vanity and drinking. Alvin may be Lynch’s healthiest, most balanced character, a man who fully understands that “the worst part of aging is remembering your youth.”

Bits and pieces about Alvin’s military experience in WWII and hard drinking after the war enrich his character, though the filmmakers don’t pretend to known him fully; this leaves plenty of room for interpretation by the viewer. At the same time, scripters and director ensure that all the characters are decent and positive. This is manifest in a wonderful vignette in which Alvin bargains with twin mechanics about the price for repairing his vehicle, and in a scene in which a priest ignores Alvin’s trespassing on his property and brings him a plate of hot food.

The film feels like Lynch’s nostalgic recollection of his own childhood in rural Montana. His portrait of the American Heartland is simple but not simplistic, unadorned but not naive. Unplanned pregnancy, broken families, traumatic effects of combat, solitude and aging are all featured in the text, but they are kept in the background.

Working with some of his former collaborators, Lynch has made a film in which visual style and thematic concerns are entirely congruent. Lenser Francis’ gorgeous long shots of the Iowa cornfields, the Mississippi river and Wisconsin roads, juxtaposed with close-ups of Farnsworth’s expressive face, and Angelo Badalamenti’s evocative music, make for a radiantly pure film.

[sorinmedia]

I haven't seen this movie yet, but really looking forward to it. I gotta say, I love the finger gestures... this is a person in tune with the universe, the fingers are like little antennas receiving energy from his surroundings. Of course he meditates so it is hardly surprising.