Review of The Straight Story (1999) by Zoran S — 11 Sep 2008

Judged strictly on its formally stunning wide screen compositions, The Straight Story may be Lynch's most beautiful film. It is simply stunning to look at. On a more abstract, and emotional, level The Straight Story is a cracked film: on the hand it is more linear, and less ironic work than the films that immediately precede and follow it. On the other hand, it manages (from a certain perspective) to be a darker and less hopeful work.

So many of Lynch's films explore how fantasy is a corrective to the failures of reality. Henry in Eraserhead has his lady in the radiator, the Elephant Man has the image of his mother to sustain him, and Jeffrey in Blue Velvet has the idealized suburban daydream where the robins have come home. Nothing of the sort sustains Alvin Straight in The Straight Story. A decaying and dying Alvin has lived a life of post-war trauma, alcoholism, and crumbling family relations. He has, in other words, both been traumatized and the cause of much trauma to others in his life. No fantastic escape awaits Alvin. For him, the only choice is one last spiritual odyssey, an attempt at redemption for a failed and pained life. Quite simply, he is making one last gesture at finding some humanity before his death.

In that regard, The Straight Story is a film about a face: the face of Alvin Straight as beautifully portrayed by Richard Farnsworth, a face that contains so much sorrow, pain, and need for redemption. And while The Straight Story isn't Lynch's best film, it is the most pure expression of the darkness that pervades his filmâ??a darkness, which not even fantasy can correct this time. Alvin may not find redemption, but that he tries so sincerely means enough for his brother in the film and, hopefully, for us in the audience.