Straight story that is not so straight (Straight Story, David Lynch, 1999)

“Straight Story” by David Lynch is a film about a journey. Old man tames a thirty year-old John Deere lawn mower to visit his ailing brother some 240 miles away.

Alvin Straight is a man with an old-fashioned agenda. Leg injury gives him trouble but he hides the seriousness of the situation from his daughter. As the storm comes to their house, news of a stroke his brother suffered strikes him and the idea of imminent journey grows on his mind. At first Rosie is reluctant to let her father go but finally helps him build a lawn mower suitable for the occasion. As he goes on his trip we learn about life almost as much as he does. There´s rain and there´s thunderstorm, there´s unhappy teenager met on the road and deer hit by car - all this we experience together with Alvin as his slow-moving vehicle approaches destination.

We learn that he has a bunch of kids but only one that really cares, we learn the hardship of the war and trough all his conversations, trough magic in actor Richard Farnsworth’s face we find that he is having “a time of his life” when one is allowed to be slightly better than he is. For me the film is all about the small problems that occupy most of our daily-life versus the things that really matters. Just consider the way Elvin shares his days in a small house with his slow-witted daughter Rose. They both aren’t perfect but they learned to live with each other in a way that would do least harm. Elvin is too old for consumerism as he reveals the size of his pocket before knowing the price, but it is his frankness that buys other people. Just pay attention to the way others are treating him - they know they are dealing with something special and quite often something really good makes us behave above the standards.

There are couple of reminders in this beautifully simple story that this is a Lynch’s film after all: there’s a a moment when Rosie watches imaginative kids, there’s Everett McGill as a kind mechanic and then there’s a small town with all it’s side stories.

David Lynch, like all the great filmmakers, is fascinated by the story. His filmmaking is about sharing a good (and complicated, sometimes) story with us. This film is no exception at it is based on real-life event where the real Alvin Straight (lived 1920-1996) made his trip in 1993. “Straight Story” is the first and only of D. Lynch’s films to get G rating and indeed is as straightforward as it could be. It´s made by a man who have seen a lot in life and reveals his findings with a touch that belongs to a master. The script is almost perfect, the pace is slow and to appreciate the beauty of the shots one has to watch this one in old-fashioned analogue format. I had to give it second try to be awarded with the story so special that it sounds almost too simple. It belongs to a handful of films (another similar road movie where the real journey is inner is Abbas Kiarostami´s “Taste of Chery”) that could be prescribed from sadness.

“Straight Story” is one of those films that makes us, viewers, just a tiny bit better. There´s some sadness, hidden smiles and occasional laughs, but at the end of the day (and road) there´s love and friendship that truly matters.