Review of The Straight Story (1999) by Jay R — 29 Jun 2010

Watching The Straight Story I can compare to watching the world cup on television. Soccer really isn't too interesting to me, and is quite a bore personally, but I love watching the skill and athleticism of the players and I can appreciate how well they can endure a long game. With The Straight Story, the movie is such an incredibly boring journey, but the lead performances of the movie by Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek are incredible. There is talent both in front and behind the camera, but David Lynch is more known for his incoherent and maddening min trips that this is a strange choice of movie for him. Alvin (Richard Farnsworth) decided to make a long road trip to Wisconsin to visit his brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) who is in bad health. He is helped out by his slowwitted daughter Rose (Sissy Spacek) and Alvin has to make the trip on a lawnmower because he cannot legally drive a car. Now we can enjoy the continuous and monotonous following of a lawnmower going 10 mph for a whole 100 minutes. The Straight Story is appropriately named because it stays on one straight note throughout the whole movie that never waivers or shifts at all. This is the same line that you see in hospital when a patient's heart has stopped on the heart monitor. In other words, this journey is completely lifeless. Suffering from repetitive landscapes, insignificant passer-bys and too much distance from the main character, The Straight Story strolls down a road that I couldn't care less about.

We begin in the town of Laurens, Iowa where we meet Rose. She struggles with simple speech and in the past when her home caught on fire, her kids barely managed to escape. Her kids were taken away from her even though it was a freak accident, all she has is her father. So her father Alvin decides that he needs to go visit his brother in bad health, although they haven't talked in 10 years. The bonding of family spans a matter of feet and hundreds of miles. Lyle is still family, he is worth making the trek for. Richard Farnsworth earned his Oscar nomination as Alvin, an elderly man who knows that he is about to reach the end of the line. You can see in his eyes that he is going to go out with his dignity in tact. As he roves across the farmland, you can see he is still stubborn and he is haunted by what he has seen. There is a great scene in a bar where he talks to another elderly man who was in the war as well. These men have seen the worst of the worst, and that emotional poignancy gives Alvin so much depth and interest. I really wish I could have got to know Rose a bit better though. She just helps her father get on the road, and then she is gone. This makes sense because the story is all about ALvin and his personal journey, but Spacek still felt highly underused.

The massive flaw in The Straight Story is the journey itself. Alvin drives on the slow lawnmower to the relaxing rural violin music and beautiful landscapes. He stares ahead wondering what is going to happen next. He runs into a girl hitchhiker named Crystal. She is running away because she is pregnant. They have a pleasant chat over a campfire and then she is gone the next day. Alvin hits the road again and the same music comes up with the same landscapes cross-fading over each other. Alvin stares ahead wondering what is going to happen next, wondering if he can make it all the way. Next he runs into a woman who crashed in front of him after she hit a deer. She complains how she is always hitting deer and then drives away to go into town to fix her car. Alvin stares at the deer, feeling sympathy for the poor animal, then returns to his lawnmower. Alvin hits the road again and the same music comes up with the same landscapes cross-fading over each other. Alvin stares ahead wondering what is going to happen next, wondering if he can make it all the way. As Alvin is going down a hill, his brakes fail and he nearly swerves out of control, but manages to stop. His lawnmower is totaled. His journey may end right here. But wait! The people in small county where he came to a stop happen to have the ability to fix the lawnmower! He even manages to get the parts for cheaper from twin mechanics obviously trying to rip them off. After he refuses some shelter from the people who gave him some food and drink, he gets back on the road very early the next morning. The same music comes up with the same landscapes cross-fading over each other. Alvin stares ahead wondering what is going to happen next, wondering if he can make it all the way. What I am trying to do here is try to give you an idea of how this movie is going to progress. It is a rinse and repeat formula that is used way too much. A better example of a dramatic road trip movie is Little Miss Sunshine. However, Little Miss Sunshine benefitted from its quirky characters and twisted plot. Here, Alvin is by himself the whole time, but he isn't of interest when he is by himself. You never really know what he is thinking and he never has that moment of insight or change that we need to get close to Alvin. We are just another onlooker as he drives by at an incredibly slow rate.

Another road trip movie is Into The Wild directed by Sean Penn. What Penn does and Lynch doesn't is put to the front of the movie the aspect of self-discovery and human connection. Into The Wild is about the realization of the fear of human kind and The Straight Story is just about moving from the beginning to the end. There are few stops and little interest. Lynch chooses to test the viewer instead of invite them to join in. We are too distant from Alvin to care about what happens on his journey or what stops will come along the way. Watching a man travel about on a lawnmower isn't exactly a moving or engaging experience. Watching Emile Hirsch as he uses various types of transportation to achieve his goal. It even shows what happens when he reaches his goal. In addition, Into The Wild explains the affect that each character he meets has on his persona. He grows and learns along with stunning nature shots and a beautiful soundtrack. The Straight Story uses the same music and scenery to try and cover up the fact that they have no events to fill this long and winding road with. The characters that he meets are just there to help, or because this 100 minute movie had to have some stops or else we would have fallen asleep. Oh wait, I almost did that anyways. The Straight Story simply cannot connect us to Alvin. One could argue that this is because he is an older man and the issues relate only to his age, but I think it is because we never get close enough to know him well enough.

His journey lasted 300 miles and the ending will either infuriate or fascinate some people. The ending is very final yet this journey was so long, an abrupt conclusion didn't seem proper. However, the final line is one that is going to make you think for a bit. I was thinking how on earth this journey could have been so bland and empty. I'm not expecting him to get robbed, have a massive accident or break a bone, but there has to be something to fill up the void. Lynch builds these characters well and the ending is at least worth talking about, but he misfires on what is important: the journey itself. A cinematic journey requires an intimacy with the character or characters who are on the journey, or so I though. To Lynch, just showing the journey is enough. The realism is there, because most trips that we have in everyday life aren't too eventful. If I am going to sit down and watch a journey about a character, it shouldn't be like one of our boring everyday life journey. We want to see a discovery of something new and that feeling of accomplishment once it ends, or even if it is going to end or not. Into The Wild, Little Miss Sunshine and even the teenage comedy Road Trip are examples of journeys with excitement and all are rich with emotion. What if I just set out to get to Alaska right now? Who knows what would happen. Into The Wild answers our question with a fantasy based off a true story. The Straight Story shows us traveling we already know. The Straight Story has the acting and the two ends of a journey, but the middle is what is important. Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless said, "The core of mans' spirit comes from new experiences." This explains why The Straight Story is spiritless, there are no new experiences for us to be had.