The Cinematheque

“One of the tenderest, most plangent spiritual odysseys ever filmed.”

Howard Hampton, Artforum

A pure distillation of David Lynch’s love for the sturdiness and uncanniness of people and things shaped by the American Midwest, The Straight Story is a film of single-minded purpose. Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) feels compelled to visit his brother, and will travel over 300 kilometers by riding mower to do so. Editor, co-writer, and producer Mary Sweeney assembled the core Lynch team of production designer Jack Fisk, cinematographer Freddie Francis, and composer Angelo Badalamenti, among others, for the film. In an unexpected twist, Disney acquired the picture out of Cannes. The strange and entrancing qualities of the work emerge unexpectedly: this is a Lynch film where instead of melodramatic intensity, action flows with the easy impermanence of a comic picaresque—albeit a strongly elegiac one. Along with The Elephant Man, it’s a vision of Lynch as a studio director: a bit more approachable but still possessed by a wandering spirit of intensely moving poetry.