The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“A great, haunting film; it affects us in ways we’re not used to, or maybe not accustomed to as much as we should be … Capable of both lifting our hearts and chilling us to the bone.”

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune

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. In an unexpected twist, after 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, Walt Disney Pictures jumped at the chance to distribute the project. The strange and entrancing qualities of the film 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.

“One of the tenderest, most plangent spiritual odysseys ever filmed … [Straight] and the relentlessly single-minded protagonists of Kiarostami’s films have an innate kinship—they are gnarled branches of the same cinematic family tree.”

Howard Hampton, Artforum

“Few films from the [’90s] feel more expansive and complex … It happens naturally upon the kinds of eccentricities and bold visions on which Lynch’s art has been staked … revealing them not as mannerisms but as manifestations of a curious, generous nature.”

Michael Koresky, Sundance Now