The late David Lynch was always best known for his fascination with the grotesque. Although Lynch never considered himself a surrealist, his films often stretched into the surreal, presenting a dark, bent version of reality where only dream logic applies. His debut feature, “Eraserhead,” he once described as “a dream of dark and troubling things.” Many celebrated his controversial 1986 neo-noir “Blue Velvet,” a film that is full of murder, kink, and aggressive sexuality. He deconstructed soap opera dynamics with his somnambulistic TV series (and subsequent feature film version of) “Twin Peaks,” went on a lusty crime spree with “Wild at Heart,” and made a shadowy contemplation of shifting identities with his porn-inflected 1997 flick “Lost Highway.”
Then, in 1999, Lynch did the strangest thing he could have possibly done. He made a G-rated biographical movie for the Disney company.
For “The Straight Story,” Lynch eschewed his usual obsessions with sex, death, and violence, and instead made a quiet, slow-moving, incredibly gentle film about an elderly man longing to reconnect with his estranged brother. The film told the true story of Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old Iowa man with a fascinating story to tell. It seems that, in 1994, Alvin’s brother Henry suffered a stroke and barely survived. Alvin wanted to go see his brother, but a string of health maladies, as well as bad vision, had taken away his driver’s license and prevented him from driving a car. Alvin, undeterred, knew that he could still legally pilot his 1966 John Deere riding lawnmower, a vehicle with a top speed of five miles per hour. He drove his riding mower all the way from Iowa to Blue River, Wisconsin, where Henry lived. The 261-mile trip took Alvin six weeks.
Lynch cast retired actor Richard Farnsworth as Alvin and told a bright, casual, slow-moving story about family, travel, and the American heartland. Despite the material, it’s still very much a David Lynch movie.
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