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copyright ©1999-2002
DigsMagazine.com.
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Plot synopsis
Seventy-three-year-old Alvin
Straight lives in a small town in middle-of-nowhere Iowa with his
daughter Rose. One day, the phone rings, and with it comes the news that
his brother Lyle has just had a stroke. Alvin hasn’t talked to Lyle in
ten years, thanks to a terrible argument, but with old age upon him and
death weighing heavily on his mind, he decides it’s time to let go of
old grudges, and reconnect with his brother. He’s determined to make a
trip out to see Lyle in person – even though it means trekking
hundreds of miles out to Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Alvin has hips so bad
he can barely stand straight, eyesight so impaired that he’s lost his
driver’s license, and very little money to his name, all of which
combine to make getting from here to there a bit of a challenge. Alvin
can’t drive himself in a car, but it’s important to him to find some
way to make the long slow journey all by himself – which is how he
finds himself seated atop an ancient little John Deere lawnmower,
pulling a makeshift trailer far too heavy for his ride to hold, putting
along patiently on an adventure that takes him through vast fields and
small hills … and eventually, over the great Mississippi River into
Wisconsin.
Review
David Lynch is so famous for making weird
movies that it’s sometimes easy to overlook the fact that Lynch’s
work is connected by far more than red velvet curtains, surreal plot
twists and incomprehensible dream symbols. At his best, he’s a
director who understands that quirks and weirdnesses define even the
most "normal"-seeming individuals, and that there’s so much
beauty to be found in these eccentricities. So The Straight Story,
a G-rated Disney movie that’s about as straightforwardly linear,
simple and easy-to-follow as a tale can get, is both decidedly un-Lynchian
(stylistically) and deeply Lynchian (thematically) at the same time.
When you think about it, it’s hard to imagine another director who
could tell the heartwarming true story of Alvin Straight quite so
perfectly, beautifully unsentimentally. There’s no denying the fact
that it’s completely absurd, and certifiably loopy, to drive a
lawnmower across any distance greater than, say, the length of one’s
own yard, but part of what’s so delightful about Richard Farnsworth’s
Alvin Straight is that he’s old enough, and tired enough, and certain
enough about what’s really important to him, that he doesn’t give a
hoot that everyone around him thinks he’s totally off his rocker for
even making the attempt. He has a brother to get to and a journey to
make, and if that journey is long, slow and oftentimes difficult, well,
that’s life. Like Alvin and his lawnmower, The Straight Story
moves at a deliberately unhurried pace – and in its totally
unpretentious, refreshingly unassuming manner, allows you to take in the
beauty of what you’re watching, to savor scenes as they quietly
unfold. —reviewed by
Y. Sun
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