The Straight Story

Director David Lynch died last year, and TCM eventually got around to doing a tribute him with a handful of his films. One that I hadn't seen before was The Straight Story, so I recorded it with a view to watching it eventually. Having finally seen it, I can now do the review for you and put it up here.

The Straight Story is based on a real story, although I'm not quite certain how much the real story was changed for the movie. If you're old enough you might remember the real story making the news, since it's one of those human interest stories that would have been ripe for turning into a movie. In Laurens, Iowa, a town in the northwest part of the state, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) lives with his adult daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), who seems to have some sort of intellectual disability: she talks a bit strangely, and mentions later in the movie that she lost custody of her children because she was declared unfit. Alvin is getting up in years and has diabetes and poor eyesight, to the point that his doctor wants him to change his lifestyle or else he'll have to use a walker after he falls and can't get up.

One day, the phone rings. Apparently, Alvin has a brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton, who only gets one scene at the end of the movie), who lives several hundred miles away in the town of Mount Zion, Wisconsin. Alvin and Lyle haven't spoken to each other in years, for reasons that aren't quite fully explained. But with Lyle possibly dying, Alvin feels that he needs to see Lyle for what might possibly be the last time. There's a catch, however. Alvin doesn't have a driver's license due to his medical issues. Rose doesn't have one either, most likely due to those intellectual issues. And with the two of them living on disability, it's not like they have much money to get a bus ticket. (If you think about it, they do considering what Alvin is able to spend money on later in the movie, but at the same time getting a bus direct from Laurens to Mount Zion is thoroughly unlikely.)

What Alvin does have, however, is a riding lawn mower. So he decides that the only thing he can do is to get on that mower and start heading for Mount Zion, even though the mower probably isn't street legal. Alvin sets out on the sort of road trip reminiscent of a movie like Harry and Tonto, in which he's going to meet interesting people along with suffering all sorts of setbacks as he tries to get to Wisconsin to see his brother. Now, since we know that there's an actor playing his brother, we know that the brother survived the stroke (in fact, Lyle was several years older than Alvin but outlived Alvin) and that the two will meet in the end.

The Straight Story is one of those movies where there's not exactly a whole lot of plot to discuss beyond a man's desire to get from point A to point B. It's also one of the more easily accessible movies from David Lynch. And thanks to the performance of Richard Farnsworth, it's definitely worth the watch.