The Straight Story
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Movie Reviews of The Straight Story
Movie Review: Brilliant Film from One of the Best Living Directors
Summary: 5 Stars
Love him or hate him, David Lynch always manages to surprise. With "The Straight Story," a G-rated family film released by Disney (surprised yet?), he gives audiences a reason to sit and ponder reality - to look up at the stars and imagine, and to look at friends and family with love.Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth, in his last movie role), a mostly-disabled farmer living with his slow-but-gentle daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek), learns that his health may be declining after both his hips give out. His doctor tells him that unless he quits smoking and begins to eat well, he will have more serious health problems. Then, Alvin gets a phone call from his brother, Lyle, who has suffered a stroke. Alvin and Lyle have not spoken in years, and Alvin decides to go visit. With bad eyesight and a daughter who cannot drive, Alvin sets off across Iowa to Wisconsin on a riding lawnmower, trailer in tow.
Along the way, he meets a variety of people who help him out, and talk with him about his trip and why he's going. As he meets different people, more of Alvin and Lyle's background is revealed, and the good nature of the main character becomes apparent. Lynch is a master filmmaker, and in his hands this script becomes magic. It moves along at a lawn-mower pace (pardon the pun), preferring to focus on character and dialogue than action, weaving an amazingly-accurate portrayal of middle-low-class Midwestern life. Lynch is known for his attention to detail, and he does not disappoint: most, if not all, of the film was shot on-location and in real buildings (as opposed to soundstages), and he bucked convention and cast real-life people in real-life roles. These aren't liposuctioned models or Hollywood pretty-boys; women have cottage cheese on their legs, men have scars and stubble, clothes are dirty, hair is greasy, and houses are dirty - in other words, it's got a sense of verisimilitude rare in any film.
"The Straight Story" is, in many ways, an anti-"Blue Velvet" or an anti-Tragedy (in the true meaning of that word). Like "BV," it offers an unflinching view of middle-class life, but instead of the constructed, artificial town of Lumberton, "The Straight Story" offers something more like a documentary look at people. Although no one in the film moralizes, and Lynch certainly doesn't use his camera to preach, what "The Straight Story" manages is to paint a view that, at their hearts, people are basically good. While bad people, car chases, explosions, and Evil Warlords might make a good movie (or a profitable newscast, depending on your level of cynicism), it's refreshing to see a master present a project that reminds us that, at our core, we are all good people, and it's really not that difficult to be good to each other.
As for the DVD, I think it goes without saying that watching Lynch's films in anything but widescreen is a crime, so it's good they gave us a solid, anamorphic transfer. He doesn't like extras, so everything is bare-bones, but considering the quality of the motion picture, the price can be forgiven.
Final Grade: A
Movie Review: Clearly one of the best acted films of the year
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is probably one of the warmest and heartbreaking films of the year and it is all because of David Lynch and Richard Farnsworth. Unlike your typical Hollywood movie, David Lynch is able to work in the multitude of charachters in "The Straight Story" in a very natural and unpretentious way. The beauty of the picture is the way in which Alvin Straight (Farnsworth) is able to touch all the people he meets as he travels from Iowa to Wisconsin on his tractor to meet his ailing brother. The ending, which may leave the typical moviegoer scrathching his head and asking "so what happens?", is brilliant in how the expressions on the brothers' faces explain how they feel; and there is no need for a long drawn out speech that screams for the Academy's attention. This film, in essence is about getting old and how aging has its benefits as well as its tragedies; how anger and resentment of family and friends is really not worth it in the end. Richard Farnsworth does a brilliant job that not many actors could have done. The wisdom he seems to have just by staring at him is astonishing. The second best line in the movie is when a young man asked him, "What is the worst thing about getting old?" and Alvin stares at him and says quietly, "Remembering when you were young." The best line, of course is the last sentence of the movie which makes you feel happy as well as sad inside.
David Lynch did a beautiful job in making the cornfields of the midwest seem amazingly scenic; trust me, I have been through Iowa and it is not as gorgeous as he made it out to be. The soundtrack goes perfect with the movie also. And I did not even mention Sissy Spacek, who plays Alvin's daughter and she does a great job as well as the rest of the cast in playing characters touched by Alvin and his mission.
What makes a movie a classic or a great film is that after you watch it, you sit there and think about it and have discussions with your friends about it. This movie did that to me, and I have been reccommending it to all my friends. But I must warn you, you also have to be in the right mood for it, and it might be best if you either watched it alone or with only a couple of other people. It is a must see for anyone.
Movie Review: A wonderful tale of redemption and reconciliation!
Summary: 5 Stars
You're probably wondering how good a movie about an old man's journey from Iowa to Wisconsin on a riding lawn mower could be and the answer would surprise you - it's VERY good. "Straight Story" is a quiet, slow-paced movie with sparse dialogue, great cinematography, superb acting, and an interesting character-driven movie that is a profound statement on fighting inner demons and reconciliation. "Straight Story" relays the true story of Alvin Straight, a 73 year-old diabetic who can no longer drive. Hobbled and in failing health Straight would appear broken to the casual observer but his spirit and will remain very alive. Learning his estranged brother, Lyle, has had a stroke Alvin decides he must go be with his brother. With single-mindedness Alvin strikes upon riding his lawn mower from Western Iowa to his brother's home in Wisconsin. The vehicle is perfect for Alvin's limited faculties and he refuses to consider someone else driving him or his taking the bus. His is a solitary quest and after a false start Alvin sets off on his journey. After a false start Alvin sets off on his journey.
Straight's journey involves challenges great and small which he meets with a quiet stoic dignity. The scenes of his journey are loaded with symbolism and imagery rarely seen in contemporary film. Richard Farnsworth's expressive face and eyes say more than any dialogue ever could and he truly deserved the Oscar for this performance (he was nominated, but lost). Along the way Alvin encounters a number of people and these moving vignettes serve as confessions for his past misdeeds. The closer Alvin comes to his goal the greater the challenges. The ending is almost anti-climactic and leaves the viewer to create their own ending as the film ends against a starry backdrop.
"Straight Story" is at once recognizably Lynchian in its odd flawed characters, use of super-saturated colors, and dynamic tension. Unlike other Lynch movies there are moments of hilarity and quiet solitude. "Straight Story" focuses on the turmoil within, not the surface terrors as in other Lynch films such as "Blue Velvet." A movie of quiet dignity, perseverance, and reconciliation it is profoundly moving and memorable.
Movie Review: Lynch in coherent, life affirming mode - no circus freaks
Summary: 5 Stars
A tough gig, you would have thought, watching a film about an old geezer who drives his lawnmower halfway across the USA to see his long lost brother. Especially if directed by David Lynch. But he pulls it off, and then some. This is one of the most coherent, positive films I've seen in a long while from anyone - it's even more remarkable that David Lynch directed it, hard on the heels of his celebratedly unfathomable "Lost Highway".For all its difference in outlook, like Wild At Heart and Lost Highway it's an unshamed road movie. Rather than carrying the story, though, here the road (literally and figuratively) IS the story: sweeping shots of the road, the headlight view, turning wheels, highways of corn, rivers of rain down the window and even the the dead straight path of the sun in the late afternoon sky reinforce this idea of an inevitable, pre-ordained journey, which Alvin (the old buzzard on the lawnmower) personifies.
With a beautifully framed sense of fatalism, Lynch takes the ostensibly absurd and makes complete sense out of it: tripping from Iowa to Wisconsin on a lawnmower isn't, you might think, the most commonsense thing to do, but in the context it's the right thing to do; it's the inevitable thing to do - and if you analyse it, it's no more pointless than a lifetime spent smoking and contracting emphysema, or for that matter not speaking to your own brother for ten years - both of which Alvin (and half the rest of us) are guilty of anyway.
The characterisations of the supporting cast are incredibly humane and real - in place of Lynch's usual cast of misfits and weirdoes, Alvin encounters a succession of decent, Middle American folk, who do decent things, whilst giving Alvin the intermittent opportunity to share some hoary old pearls of wisdom, and confront one of two of the demons in his past. This aspect could have easily devolved into sordid sentimentality, but Lynch handles it very deftly indeed. The same could have been true of the final scene, but (without giving away too much), it is done with a beautiful lightness of touch, and it left me with that all-too-rare sense of complete satisfaction as the credits rolled. This is an outstanding movie.
Movie Review: The kinder, gentler David Lynch movie.
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Straight Story" has the gorgeously colored, semi-surreal look of a typical David Lynch movie, but here the surrealism is lyrical and benign. There are no armies of insects fighting to the death underneath the amber wheatfields, no severed ears in the pristine woods. The overweight next-door neighbor, sunning herself while eating pastel-colored Hostess snowballs, may look weird, but she's perfectly nice. As the title implies, this is the "straight" and deceptively simple story based on the true tale of Alvin Straight, an elderly Iowa man who, hearing that his long-estranged brother has had a stroke, wants to go to Wisconsin and mend fences with him. Too incapacitated himself to drive a car, he hitches a trailer to his riding lawn mower and spends five weeks driving the 300 miles along country roads to his brother's house. That's all there is to it, but it's incredibly moving, thanks to Freddie Francis' gorgeous photography of the Midwest countryside and Lynch's poetic direction. Above all, what makes this movie worth seeing is the exquisite, deeply moving performance of Richard Farnsworth as Alvin Straight. Silent for long stretches of the film, Farnsworth tells the story of Straight's life mainly through his eyes, showing a world of stubborn decency and bitter regret. When Farnsworth does speak--such as his monologue in a bar about his World War II experiences as a sniper--you will never forget it. There is only one recent screen performance that is at all like Farnsworth's--Adrien Brody's in "The Pianist." There is also Sissy Spacek's performance as Straight's mentally challenged daughter Rose; although Spacek's performance seems overly mannered at first, she keeps revealing telling details about Rose until, at the end, her performance is as haunting as Farnsworth's own. "The Straight Story" may have the look and slightly off-kilter feel of a David Lynch movie, but at heart it resembles another recent Disney-released movie, "The Rookie," which also is deeply concerned with the love of family and the need for second chances in life. Both movies are beautifully realized, but "The Straight Story" is an authentic American masterpiece.