“The Straight Story” begins like many other David Lynch films. First with the stars twinkling in the night. Then shots of a small town somewhere in the American Midwest: green meadows and red brick buildings with industrial fixtures filling the background. Angelo Badalamenti’s mournful, string-laden score draws us in, emphasizing the uniqueness of the images, while also suggesting a deeper pain at the center of this place. But instead of the psychosexual nightmares discovered in “Blue Velvet” and “Misplaced Freeway” or the metaphysical crises confronted in “The Elephant Man” and “Twin Peaks,” what we find is, as the title suggests, a very simple experience. story, although its emotional weight goes far beyond the words spoken and the narrative displayed.
From “Eraserhead” to “Twin Peaks: The Return,” and perhaps even before with his short films, Lynch’s work has always been consumed by the difficult power of love, not just the brightness it brings to people’s lives. , but also because of the darkness that can lead to. And yet, in “The Straight Story,” the divinity of love is not defined by what terrifies, but by what unites two estranged but cosmically intertwined brothers, who have neither the time nor the health to avoid making amends. their fractured relationship.
All of Lynch’s staples are present throughout the film, from unconventional characters to haunting sound design, but also a purity and gentleness that contrasts with almost all of his other work. However, by adopting these characteristics, Lynch reached a turning point in his career that allowed him to conquer subsequent masterpieces such as “Mulholland Drive”, “Inland Empire” and the 18-episode Showtime series “Twin Peaks: The Return”, all of which show the visionary author’s keen instincts operating at the highest level and now represent the culmination of all his art.
Defined by Lynch in a 2001 Empire magazine interview As his “most experimental film” to that point, “The Straight Story” follows Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), an elderly World War II veteran suffering from multiple ailments who resolves to travel 240 miles on a John Deere lawnmower. to visit his sick brother. I haven’t spoken to him in 10 years. Based on a current story, the screenplay was written by Lynch’s frequent producer and editor, Mary Sweeney, along with his childhood friend John Roach.
Lynch was living with Sweeney at the time (they later married and divorced between 2006 and 2007) and wasn’t all that interested in her concept until he read the script. The strong emotions that reading provoked in him are what forced him to want to undertake the project and after having spent the decade working on intense materials such as “Wild at Coronary heart”, “Twin Peaks: Fireplace Stroll with Me” and “Misplaced Freeway ”, Lynch also discovered that it was time to face an even more unique challenge: moderation.
“I felt that his longing for a pure, intense feeling represented something that was in the air,” Lynch said in an interview with The New York Times before the film’s limited theatrical release in 1999. “I don’t know if what’s in the air is also a desire to take a break from sex and violence or, rather, a yearning for a tenderer, more direct narrative.” ”.
Lynch’s statement here speaks not only to his intention in this project, but also to the basic ethos he carried as an artist in that he never wanted to be definitive or prescriptive about what he published. This proved to be a constant challenge throughout his career, as the studio reissued his 1984 version of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” and Bob Iger forced Lynch to reveal Laura Palmer’s killer in the second season of “Twin.” Peaks,” which led to the series airing. drop. But with “The Straight Story,” Lynch created something that managed to have its own unique style, but was healthy enough that Disney wanted to acquire it after its premiere in competition at Cannes.
Still, despite being a critical success, with only a limited release, the film was a relative failure at the box office. While this was almost never a metric that Lynch attributed any value to, struggling to connect despite stretching his art in new directions, something had to have clicked for him at this point, as the work that followed would come to represent the most maximalist outings of his entire career, all done on his own terms.
“Mulholland Drive” began as a television project that was filmed before “The Straight Story” debuted, but it was ignored by executives who wanted to know where it was going. Lynch couldn’t share this because, most likely, not even he could answer a question like that. While its narrative involving amnesia and mob-minded movie executives has more in common with “Twin Peaks” than “The Straight Story,” Lynch’s desire to let the work flow freely rather than create a point to reach is It feels like a lesson that I could only have fully embraced in making this latest film.
Almost every aspect of her production, from working with her old friend Sissy Spacek (wife of Lynch’s ordinary production designer Jack Fisk) and Richard Farnsworth, who was suffering from terminal metastatic prostate cancer during filming, to choosing to film in chronological order throughout current time. While Straight drove his lawnmower, Lynch worked to keep his heart as connected as possible to his character’s journey, thereby impacting the audience’s experience as well. Whether it’s the framing of Farnsworth’s world-weary gaze or the use of lightning and thunder to emphasize the emotional blow Straight experiences upon hearing that his brother suffered a stroke, Lynch continually exposes his character’s pain in ways that They supplant the need for long monologues or diatribes.
This confident understanding of performance, imagery, and staging translates not only to the dreamlike logical execution of “Mulholland Drive,” but also to the hallucinatory panic of Lynch’s 2006 mystery thriller, “Inland Empire.” Starring Laura Dern as a Hollywood actress whose identity is lost in the latest persona she’s trying to adopt, “Inland Empire” has often been described as Lynch’s “Persona” or “8 1/2” as it seeks to analyze the filmmaker’s own relationship with the art he is producing.
Although it serves as a conclusive collection of all the themes and concepts that Lynch tackled throughout his career, there is more to what connects the viewer to each frayed moment that is presented throughout the film and develops in multiple directions. with our understanding of Lynch than with our understanding of Lynch. does anything on display. Even the strange anthropomorphic rabbits make us think about all the holes Lynch tends to shoot down in us more than any meaning they might have in the context of the story. Again, thinking about “Inland Empire” through this lens, as Lynch fully embraces himself, one can’t help but trace the impetus for this back to “The Straight Story” and how it reinforced in him not only what drives his artwork, but what also keeps him striving to achieve more.
“We are all capable of doing many types of things,” Lynch said in a 2006 interview with KGSM Media Cache“and it’s what you fall in love with.”
Returning to Lynch’s thematic touchstone, although “Inland Empire” may signify a closure (or expansion, depending on how you look at it) of his cinematic dialogue, “Twin Peaks: The Return” holds the place as his remaining work of love. Perhaps for the first time in his career, Lynch was able to go as far as the road would take him, throwing all his skills as a filmmaker, sound designer, musician, visible artist and human being against the wall in a dark fantasy. of mystery, comedy, horror and violence. But beneath the quirks and bloodshed, what’s truly fascinating about “Twin Peaks: The Return” is the extremely evident passion that emerges from this meeting between Lynch and his most beloved collaborators, all those who helped make his crazy visions a reality. .
Kyle MacLachlan, Lauren Dern and Naomi Watts appear prominently, as do much of the cast of the original series and newcomers such as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Sizemore, Tim Roth and Matthew Lillard. Harry Dean Stanton, whose brief appearance in “The Straight Story” may be one of his most impactful performances, also participated, making it one of his last roles before his death in 2017. As did the participation of Spacek, Farnsworth and Stanton in “The Straight Story” elevates the film beyond what is simply seen on the screen, just as Lynch’s reunion with some of his closest friends and companions for one last journey increases the fascinating charm and emotional weight of “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
If you love Lynch for “Eraserhead” and “Mulholland Drive,” then it’s understandable how, taken at face value, “The Straight Story” can seem like an unusual detour in his otherwise downright bizarre output. He does not venture into the surreal or the grotesque, but rather remains interested and tied to the will and determination of a man to leave everything aside for the benefit of another. It’s hard not to feel that Lynch did the same for us as an audience, not only redefining the way we experience cinema, but also how we interpret our own thoughts. His goal, if he had one, was to get us to embrace the unknown and face life not by its questions and answers, but by how we feel attracted to each other despite the distance or personal animosity that separates us.
In many ways, Lynch was no different than Alvin Straight, as he chose to take a well-trodden path, but in a way no other guy would have thought of; One that allowed him to see and feel the perplexities and sensations of life – its supreme beauties and twisted tragedies – for all they were. The majesty of the stars of the night sky and the other worlds they suggest are a prominent feature throughout Lynch’s work, but are perhaps most powerfully recognized in “The Straight Story” as what unites Alvin and his brother.
“I’m sure the sky is full of stars tonight,” he says at one point, looking up. With Lynch blinking there now too, one can rest easy knowing that the dark night just got a little brighter.
