The Straight Story
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The Straight Story (stylised as the Straight story) is a 1999 biographical road drama 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 Template:Convert, and sets off on the 240-mile (390 km) journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion, Wisconsin.
The Straight Story was released by Walt Disney Pictures<ref name=AFI>Template:Cite web</ref> in the United States.<ref name="Disney">Template:Cite news</ref> The film grossed $6.2 million in a limited theatrical release in the United States and sold 516,597 tickets nationwide during France's theatrical release.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The film was a critical success;<ref name="The Straight Story">Template:Cite web</ref> reviewers praised the intensity of the character performances, particularly the realistic dialogue which film critic Roger Ebert compared to the works of Ernest Hemingway.<ref name="ebert"/> It received a nomination for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and Farnsworth received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the oldest nominee in the category at the time. Template:David Lynch sidebar
Plot
[edit]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.
Cast
[edit]Production
[edit]Development
[edit]In 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight rode a lawnmower across roughly 250 miles of the American Midwest to visit his ailing brother.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref> Mary Sweeney, David Lynch's frequent collaborator, read about Straight's story in The New York Times that summer.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Ebert.com">Template:Cite web</ref> 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."<ref name=":1" />
Producer Ray Stark had already acquired the rights to Straight's story and envisioned the project as a potential star vehicle for Paul Newman.<ref name=":1" /> 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.<ref name=":1" /> When Lynch saw the finished script he immediately took to it, saying "it became, for me, very real."<ref name=":1" />
Casting
[edit]For the role of Alvin Straight, producers cast their first choice, Richard Farnsworth.<ref name=":1" /> 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.<ref name=":1" /> Sissy Spacek, a longtime friend of Lynch's who had helped to finance his earlier film Eraserhead, was cast as Alvin's daughter, Rose.<ref name=":1" /> Harry Dean Stanton was cast as Alvin's ailing brother.<ref name=":1" />
Filming
[edit]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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Lynch would later call the film "my most experimental movie".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Farnsworth died by suicide on October 6, 2000, at the age of 80.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
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).<ref name="Disney" /><ref name="Ringer">Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name="Disney" />
Music
[edit]The musical score for The Straight Story was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, continuing a 13-plus year collaboration with Lynch that began with Blue Velvet.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A soundtrack album was released on October 12, 1999, by Windham Hill Records.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Soundtrack
[edit]All music composed and conducted by Angelo Badalamenti.
Home media
[edit]The Straight Story was released on DVD on November 7, 2000 by Walt Disney Home Entertainment.Template:Cn 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."<ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> On April 3, 2020, the film became available to stream on Disney+.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
On September 17, 2021, The Straight Story received a limited edition Blu-ray release from Imprint Films.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Reception
[edit]Critical reception
[edit]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".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> 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 American Midwestern landscape."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
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."<ref name="NYT">Template:Cite news</ref> 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."<ref name="NYT" /> 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."<ref name="NYT" />
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."<ref name="ebert">Template:Cite web</ref>
On review aggregator Rotten 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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On Metacritic, the film has a score of 86 out of 100, based on 32 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".<ref name="The Straight Story"/>
Awards and honors
[edit]The Straight Story was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival.<ref name=cannes/> Richard Farnsworth earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Alvin Straight.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> For 21 years he held the record as the oldest person (at 79) to be nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. Farnsworth also won the 1999 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film.<ref name=NY/>
Notes
[edit]References
[edit]External links
[edit]- Template:Official website – archived from the original on September 20, 2020
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Template:David Lynch Template:BIFA BestForeignFilm Template:Authority control
- 1999 drama films
- 1999 films
- 1999 independent films
- 1990s American films
- 1990s biographical drama films
- 1990s British films
- 1990s drama road movies
- 1990s English-language films
- 1990s French films
- American biographical drama films
- American drama road movies
- American films based on actual events
- American independent films
- BAC Films films
- British biographical drama films
- British drama road movies
- English-language French films
- English-language independent films
- European Film Awards winners (films)
- Film4 Productions films
- Films about atonement
- Films about brothers
- Films about father–daughter relationships
- Films about old age
- Films about veterans
- Films directed by David Lynch
- Films scored by Angelo Badalamenti
- Films set in Iowa
- Films set in Wisconsin
- Films shot in Iowa
- Films shot in Wisconsin
- French biographical drama films
- French drama road movies
- John Deere
- Postmodern films
- StudioCanal films
- Walt Disney Pictures films
- English-language biographical drama films