Retrospective: The Straight Story (Patreon)

After a few viewings, The Straight Story becomes a different movie. When you've seen the movie once, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) is a troubled but lovably wayward geezer. Disney+'s synopsis of the movie — "story of a man who takes a six week trip on his riding lawn mower" — is clearly a drastic over-simplification, but the movie ultimately seems upbeat and positive. On my fifth viewing, I pieced together a darker picture of Alvin. When he meets a teenage runaway, he tells her that his wife bore 14 children, seven of whom survived. We've seen Rose (Sissy Spacek), but where are the other six living Straight children? Later, Alvin tells Verlin (Wiley Harker), a fellow World War II veteran, that he returned from the war mean and alcoholic. It's not hard to put two and two together at this point. Alvin Straight is a man reckoning with his own darkness; the last vestige of a breed of Midwestern man who's too late to undo a lot of the damage he's done, but takes one last journey as penance before his death.

Alvin Straight is a contemporary folk legend; the type of wanderer more often found in Mark Twain novels than 1990s newspapers. In David Lynch and Mary Sweeney's estimation, he'd only go as far as he does out of some deep sense of obligation. He heads to see his brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) to ensure he doesn't die with one more failed personal relationship.

Not much of Alvin's darkness is stated in dialogue. Midwesterners don't like to talk about their feelings — riding a lawnmower from Iowa to Wisconsin is how Alvin speaks to his brother. The Straight brothers don't need to speak out loud to communicate; Lyle takes one look at the lawnmower and breaks down. It's a simple, devastating act of love; the kind that most great stories are made of.

David Lynch's entire body of work consists of great statements of love. "Fix your hearts or die." Lynch's movies had tremendous empathy for every human being, even the monsters. The only unforgivable sin in his work was malicious violence against other human beings; the shutting out of other worlds and possibilities. His dark, caustic body of work is a love letter to the untapped potential of human beings' capacity for compassion. David Lynch's tales of darkness made this world a brighter place. When I heard about his passing, I shrieked and burst into tears. Lynch insisted better worlds were not only possible but already existed; we just had to open our hearts to them. Only a compassionate man who saw through the darkness would make such a tender movie about an old kook and his lawnmower. The Straight Story is one of David Lynch's greatest gifts. We'll be grateful to him forever.