The Straight Story (stylised as the Straight story) is a 1999 biographicalroaddrama film directed by David Lynch. It was edited and produced by Mary Sweeney, Lynch's longtime partner and collaborator, who also co-wrote the script with John E. Roach. It is based on the true story of Alvin Straight's 1994 journey across Iowa and Wisconsin on a lawn mower. The film is generally regarded as one of Lynch's more accessible and mainstream works, alongside The Elephant Man (1980).
Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) is an elderly World War II veteran who lives with his daughter. When he hears that his estranged brother has suffered a stroke, Alvin makes up his mind to visit him and hopefully make amends before he dies. Because Alvin's legs and eyes are too impaired for him to receive a driver's license, he hitches a trailer to his recently purchased thirty-year-old John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor, which has a maximum speed of about 5 miles per hour (2.2m/s; 8.0km/h), and sets off on the 240-mile (390km) journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion, Wisconsin.
In Laurens, Iowa, Alvin Straight fails to show up to his regular bar meeting with friends and is eventually found lying on his kitchen floor after a fall. His daughter, Rose, takes her reluctant father to see a doctor, who sternly admonishes him to give up tobacco, improve his diet, and use a walker, all of which he rejects. When Alvin's brother, Lyle, suffers a stroke, Alvin decides to visit Lyle, even though they have not spoken in ten years.
As neither Alvin (due to his age) nor Rose (due to an unspecified disability) have a driver's license, Alvin decides to travel 240 miles to Mount Zion, Wisconsin on his riding mower, towing a small homemade travel-trailer along the way. This stirs doubt and worry in the minds of his family, friends, and neighbors.
Alvin's first attempt quickly fails when the mower's motor breaks down. He hitchhikes to the Grotto of the Redemption and arranges for someone to take him home. Frustrated, he shoots the mower with a shotgun. He buys a used 1966 John Deere 110 lawn tractor to resume his journey.
Alvin meets a variety of people on the road. He shares his dinner with a young, pregnant female hitchhiker, who ran away from home out of fear that her family would be upset. Alvin teaches her about the importance of family, comparing it to a bundle of sticks that is hard to break compared to a single stick. The next day, she leaves him a bundle of sticks tied together as a thank-you. Several RAGBRAI cyclists are amused to see him on the highway and welcome him to their campsite. He speaks with some of the cyclists about growing old. He also meets a distraught woman who hit a deer during her commute and tearfully rants about how she keeps on hitting deer despite her prayers. Alvin cooks and eats the deer, mounting the antlers on his trailer as a tribute to the deer and the sustenance it provided.
Alvin's tractor begins to fail, throwing his journey into jeopardy. His brakes fail as he travels down a steep hill, but he manages to stop. Danny, a local, invites Alvin to camp in his backyard until his tractor is repaired. He offers to drive Alvin to Mount Zion, but Alvin declines, preferring to travel his own way.
Running low on cash, Alvin asks Rose to send him his Social Security check. Two bickering mechanics overcharge him for fixing his tractor, but he cannily bargains the price down. A fellow veteran invites Alvin for a drink, and they exchange traumatic stories about their experiences in World War II. Alvin confesses that he is still haunted by killing an American in a friendly fire incident, and says that he became an alcoholic after the war, although he has since kicked the habit.
After crossing into Wisconsin, Alvin chats with a Catholic priest who recognizes Lyle's name and is aware of his stroke. The priest says that Lyle never mentioned a brother. Alvin admits that he wants to make amends. Although the exact cause of the estrangement is never stated, Alvin says his alcoholism contributed to it.
Alvin finally arrives in Mount Zion. To steel himself, Alvin has his first beer in years. However, his engine fails shortly before reaching Lyle's house. A passing driver stops to fix his tractor. After Alvin arrives, Lyle (aged and using a walker) invites him to sit together on the porch. Lyle asks if Alvin rode the tractor all the way just to see him. Alvin quietly confirms this, and Lyle's eyes well up with tears. The two men sit together silently and gaze up at the stars.
In 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight rode a lawnmower across roughly 250 miles of the American Midwest to visit his ailing brother.[9]Mary Sweeney, David Lynch's frequent collaborator, read about Straight's story in The New York Times that summer.[10][11] Said Sweeney, "Growing up in Wisconsin, I easily connected with that kind of stoic, non-verbal, stubborn, idiosyncratic American character. I get how hard it is to have quiet pride and dignity when you're old and poor and are living in the middle of nowhere. I understand what these people's dreams and frustrations are. And I loved how much his journey captured the national imagination, so, wearing my producer's hat, I started trying to secure the rights."[9]
Producer Ray Stark had already acquired the rights to Straight's story and envisioned the project as a potential star vehicle for Paul Newman.[9] Straight died in 1996, and the rights to his story became available again. Sweeney co-wrote the script with John Roach, a childhood friend; the two retraced Straight's route in the process of writing.[9] When Lynch saw the finished script he immediately took to it, saying "it became, for me, very real."[9]
Casting
For the role of Alvin Straight, producers cast their first choice, Richard Farnsworth.[9] Though he was reluctant to commit to the role as he was then terminally ill with metastatic prostate cancer, he took the role out of admiration for Straight.[9]Sissy Spacek, a longtime friend of Lynch's who had helped to finance his earlier film Eraserhead, was cast as Alvin's daughter, Rose.[9]Harry Dean Stanton was cast as Alvin's ailing brother.[9]
Filming
The Straight Story was independently shot along the actual route taken by Straight, and all scenes were shot in chronological order in the autumn of 1998.[12] Lynch would later call the film "my most experimental movie".[13]
During production, Farnsworth's cancer had spread to his bones, but he astonished his co-workers with his tenacity during production. The paralysis of his legs as shown in the film was real.[14] Farnsworth died by suicide on October 6, 2000, at the age of 80.[15]
The Straight Story was acquired by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States after a successful debut at Cannes and was given a G rating by the MPAA (the only Lynch film to receive such a rating).[4][16] It was Peter Schneider, Disney's president of production at the time, that got the idea to have the studio acquire the film after seeing it at Cannes, calling it "a beautiful movie about values, forgiveness and healing and celebrates America. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a Walt Disney film." October Films also negotiated for the rights, but a deal never materialized.[4]
All music composed and conducted by Angelo Badalamenti.
The Straight Story: Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Laurens, Iowa"
2:45
2.
"Rose's Theme"
2:55
3.
"Laurens Walking"
4:11
4.
"Sprinkler"
2:56
5.
"Alvin's Theme"
4:25
6.
"Final Miles"
4:06
7.
"Country Waltz"
2:46
8.
"Rose's Theme"
3:07
9.
"Country Theme"
3:38
10.
"Crystal"
4:07
11.
"Nostalgia"
6:51
12.
"Farmland Tour"
3:09
13.
"Montage"
7:24
Total length:
48:09
Home media
The Straight Story was released on DVD on November 7, 2000 by Walt Disney Home Entertainment.[citation needed] As with many of Lynch's films, there are no chapter markers on the original North American DVD release, with a note written by Lynch inside the DVD case that reads, "It is my opinion that a film is not a book – it should not be broken up. It is a continuum and should be seen as such."[22] On April 3, 2020, the film became available to stream on Disney+.[23]
On September 17, 2021, The Straight Story received a limited edition Blu-ray release from Imprint Films.[24]
Reception
Critical reception
The Straight Story was critically acclaimed upon its release, with critics lauding Lynch's uncharacteristic subject matter. Entertainment Weekly described the film as a "celestial piece of Americana".[25] The Chicago Tribune wrote of the film, "we see something American studio movies usually don't give us: the simple, unsentimentalized beauty of the rural AmericanMidwestern landscape."[26]
Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "the same bellwether quality that left Blue Velvet looking so prescient, and ushered in a whole cinematic wave of taboo-shattering, is at work once again. When a born unnaturalist like Lynch can bring such interest and emotion to one man's simple story, the realm of the ordinary starts looking like a new frontier."[27] Of Farnsworth's performance, Maslin wrote, "he automatically frees the film from any sense of artifice and delivers an amazingly stalwart performance that will not soon be forgotten."[27] Her review concluded, "The Straight Story is...about gazing at the sky, about experiencing each encounter to the fullest, than it is about getting anywhere in a hurry. It's been too long since a great American movie dared to regard life that way."[27]
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, the first positive review he had given to a film by Lynch. He wrote: "The first time I saw The Straight Story I focused on the foreground and liked it. The second time I focused on the background, too, and loved it. The movie isn't just about the old Alvin Straight's odyssey through the sleepy towns and rural districts of the Midwest, but about the people he finds to listen and care for him."[7]
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 106 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "With strong performances and director David Lynch at the helm, The Straight Story steers past sentimental byways on its ambling journey across the American heartland."[28] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 86 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[6]
↑ "The Straight Story". Q. March 2000. p.109. Neatly complements David Lynch's images of endless highways and patchwork fields...with some suitably open-plained backing....A useful souvenir of the complete movie experience.
↑ "The Straight Story". Uncut. January 2000. p.104. One of those rare pieces of music which freezes time, warms your will and causes you to perceive everything around you as if it's bathed in shafts of dusty sunlight"
↑ Lynch, David (director) (November 7, 2000). The Straight Story. Walt Disney Studios.
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