Mower Than It Seems

A man rides his lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin to visit his estranged brother.

For those familiar with director David Lynch's work (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway), this storyline, which is based on the actual journey made by 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), seems right up Lynch's alley---quirky and Midwestern, with a lawnmower thrown in for good measure. Interestingly enough, Lynch was initially opposed to directing The Straight Story. But after reading the screenplay written by Mary Sweeney and John Roach, Lynch was won over: "[I] wasn't interested in it. I never thought I would make this story, but the screenplay turned me around. I loved it."

Is Lynch's artistic vision more than a mere fixation on the eclectic and the bizarre? To be sure, Lynch's work holds a tremendous, albeit sometimes ironic, sense of poignancy. Take Twin Peaks, for instance: While the producers at ABC, as well as a nation of television viewers, were obsessed with "Who Killed Laura Palmer?", Lynch affirmed that the focus of the project was never the identification of the killer, but rather the depiction of one town's reaction to the loss of innocence. Twin Peaks was unsuccessful because it was marketed like a "Dallas" episode. Forced to finger a killer, Lynch was adrift at sea.

For Lynch, the end does not necessarily justify the means, and as anyone who has ever seen his movies could attest, to seek gratification contingent only on a David Lynch ending will force you to question the price of your admission ticket. Even without our complete comprehension, Lynch always manages to show something unexpected, something fresh. But is this any less justified of an approach to filmmaking? Sure, we know what's going to happen, 15 minutes into the movie and this fact, coupled with our optimistic belief that happy endings still exist, leaves us confident that Alvin Straight will be reunited with his brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton), whether incarnate or in spirit. But if the film only promised us the potential for factual knowledge, could we sit through it? Not to be a complete moral relativist, but I wonder who'd really care what happened to Alvin? Alvin Straight traveled from Iowa to Wisconsin in 1994. I didn't know this before I read the press release and I probably never would have understood Straight's journey without Lynch's film.

And perhaps this is one reason for Lynch's initial apprehension. Every day and all over the world, the lost are found; those who were separate become joined; the estranged are reunited. This is a universal good--the stuff from which our favorite movies are made. Of course, it's also a potential clich in the making. Some amount of significance, separate from the allure of universality, must exist to merit the making of a new film. Still, Lynch sticks to his tried and true methods in The Straight Story. Again, Lynch collaborates with composer Angelo Baladamenti to create a score that is hauntingly reminiscent of earlier works. (One can't help but wonder if this was an intentional manipulation for the sake of tension--a tension based more on the memory of Lynch's previous works than anything that actually happens in The Straight Story.)

But the most impressive aspect of Lynch's adaptation is the absence of any canonizing or aggrandizing tendencies. Although both David Lynch and Freddie Francis, the director of photographer, pay homage to Straight's perseverance, The Straight Story is by no means a documentary. The wheels on Straight's lawnmower blend with the turning of tractor wheels. Bicyclists, cars, trucks whiz right by. Never for a moment are you made to forget that Straight is riding a 1966 John Deere. And for those of us willing to trot along at five miles-per-hour, the story is unexpectedly rewarding.