The Straight Story Review: David Lynch Applies Distinct Visual Style to Riveting Family Drama for Disney (1999 Movie)

The Straight Story is Directed by David Lynch and Stars Richard Farnsworth and Sissy Spacek

Review: The Straight Story veers off from the usual David Lynch motifs and expectations, but it delivers strong emotional highpoints and a sturdy story nevertheless. The director of classics like Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet proves he can work at different speeds, and this straight to Disney family story is told with poignant intelligence that many of its contemporaries aren’t.

The Straight Story Review

Endlessly fascinating as a divergence from the usual style of David Lynch, The Straight Story is the acclaimed director at his friendliest. Made for Disney and sandwiched between Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, this movie of a farmer just trying to see his brother is an uncomplicatedly intimate and sincere picture of family at its warmest.

But that’s not to say that David Lynch reins in his style to compliment The Straight Story. The visual collages are still present, giving the film a slight cosmic touch despite being such a grounded story. The few pivots to shots from outer space (including the ones that bookend the movie) remind you that The Straight Story is extremely simple and contained within a world filled with thousands of stories worth sharing like this. That this story of an elderly man travelling from Iowa to Wisconsin by lawnmower may seem ridiculous on paper, but that its just one of many in such a big world.

The movie is based on a true story where Alvin Straight (played by Richard Farnsworth a year before his passing in 2000) commits to visiting his ailing brother in Wisconsin by any means necessary, even if Alvin has to craft an elaborate way to get there since his age has caused him to hang up the car keys. As a result, Alvin hitches a makeshift trailer to the back of an old lawnmower and makes the 240 mile journey northeast into Wisconsin. Along the way, he meets an eclectic group of strangers and experiences many different events and cultures he wouldn’t find in his small town of Laurens.

David Lynch finds a way to make the small towns in The Straight Story feel alive. It makes sense as the writer/director is known for his stories of smalltown lifestyle turning nightmarish, but its that last part that Lynch manages to put away for this feature. The Straight Story is all of the nicest parts of a classic Lynch tale, minus the underbelly that is usually exposed to reveal some deep seeded truth about those that control the town. The Straight Story keeps it, well, straight. Its simplicity is one of its best aspects.

I personally prefer the angst and dread that comes with the usual David Lynch experience, and so while The Straight Story is a perfectly feasibly, often sincere and lean experience that warms the heart, its not what I seek out David Lynch for. I prefer the director to get under my skin, so movies like The Straight Story and The Elephant Man don’t linger with me quite as long as ones like Blue Velvet and the Twin Peaks franchise. But I admire and respect the fact that Lynch went back to this well twice to make something as endearing as this.

And there are some slim differences between The Elephant Man and The Straight Story. The former is conceived of much earlier in Lynch’s career and thus has a grimier, low budget feel to it despite the eventual critical acclaim and awards presence it had. The Elephant Man also has a much larger bellowing of emotions. It doesn’t stay bottled up quite like The Straight Story does, which relies on a few crucial moments in the third act to deliver the sort of emotional resonance needed to make the film worth it.

The Straight Story veers off from the usual David Lynch motifs and expectations, but it delivers strong emotional highpoints and a sturdy story nevertheless. The director of classics like Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet proves he can work at different speeds, and this straight to Disney family story is told with poignant intelligence that many of its contemporaries failed to do.

Score: 7/10

Genre: Drama, Family

Watch The Straight Story (1999) on Disney and VOD

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