In the opening scene of Blue Velvet, David Lynch showed us the life that festers beneath the green of our clipped suburban lawns.
In The Straight Story, Lynch stays above the grass. An ordinary old man embarks on an extraordinary journey, travelling three hundred miles on
his lawnmower to visit his estranged but infirm brother. The triumph of this
film is that Lynch manages to take this slim, based-on-fact premise, and
produce an immensely engaging and deeply-felt road movie.
The film starts as it means to go on: as slowly as the tractor on which
Alvin sits, gradually building the character of the proud but amiable
Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth). There is a fear of an
over-sentimentalized story due to the appearance of a few watery-eyed old men, the 'nice' music by Badalamenti and seeing the word 'Disney' in the opening credits, but this fear dissolves the further away from home Alvin gets.
So how does Lynch spice up the story? There's a steep hill, for
starters, and the occurrence of rain. There are also various anecdotes - some
better than others - from the people Alvin meets on the road. But the emotional
climax and most wrenching of all the tales comes from Alvin himself as
his shares a story of friendly fire with an old soldier.
The true success of David Lynch's film is the unshaven genius of
Farnsworth. He manages in his performance to balance wisdom and sadness and regret without any outward show of artifice. The atonement and healing of
wounds that Alvin is striving for take on epic proportions in this lyrical love
song to the American countryside.
Reviewed by Iain Tibbles
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