“The straight story” begins like many others David Lynch films. First with stars that flicker in the night. Then images of a small town somewhere in the American Midwest — green lawns and red brick buildings with industrial fixtures filling the background. Angelo Badalamenti’s mournful, string-laden score drawing us in, emphasizing the picturesque in the visuals, while hinting at a deeper pain at the core of this place. But instead of the psychosexual nightmares discovered in “Blue Velvet” and “Lost Highway” or the metaphysical crises faced in “The Elephant Man” and “Twin Peaks”, what we find instead is – as the title suggests – a very simple story, albeit one whose emotional weight is far beyond words spoken and narrative unfolds.
From “Eraserhead” to “Twin Peaks: The Return” and perhaps even earlier with his short films, Lynch’s oeuvre has always been consumed by the unwieldy power of love, not only in the brightness it brings to people’s lives, but also in the darkness it can lead to. And yet, with “The Straight Story,” the divinity of love is defined not by what frightens, but instead by what unites two estranged, yet cosmically intertwined brothers who have neither the time nor the health to forego mending their fractured relationship.
All Lynch staples are found throughout filmfrom offbeat characters to haunting sound design, but also a purity and gentleness that contrasts with pretty much all of his other work. By embracing these qualities, however, Lynch reached a career inflection point that allowed him to conquer subsequent masterpieces “Mulholland Drive,” “Inland Empire” and the 18-episode Showtime series “Twin Peaks: The Return,” all of which showcase the visionary auteur’s sharpened instincts work at the highest level and now represent a culmination of his entire artistry.
Defined by Lynch in a Interview with Empire Magazine 2001 As his “most experimental film” up to that point, “The Straight Story” follows Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), an elderly WWII veteran suffering from multiple ailments who decides to travel 240 miles via John Deere lawnmower to visit his sick brother he hasn’t spoken to in 10 years. Based on a true story, the screenplay was written by Lynch’s frequent producer and editor Mary Sweeney, along with her childhood friend John Roach.
Lynch was living with Sweeney at the time – they later married and divorced in 2006-2007 – and was not too interested in her idea until he read the script. The heavy emotions it drew out of him as he read is what compelled him to want to take on the project and after spending the decade with intense material like “Wild at Heart,” “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” and “Lost Highway ,” Lynch also found it was time for an even more unique challenge: Restraint.
“I felt its longing for pure, intense emotion represented something that was in the air,” Lynch said in an interview with New York Times ahead of 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 more tender, more direct storytelling.”
Lynch’s statement here speaks not only to his intent with this project, but the overall ethos he carried as an artist in that he never wanted to be definitive or prescriptive about what he put out there. This proved to be a constant challenge throughout his career, with his 1984 version of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” being recut by the studio, as well as Bob Iger forcing Lynch to reveal Laura Palmer’s killer in “Twin Peaks” season 2, leading to the downfall of the broadcast series. But with “The Straight Story,” Lynch created something that managed to be of his own, unique style, yet wholesome enough that Disney would want to acquire it after the competition premiere at Cannes.
Despite being a critical success, with only a limited release, the film was a relative dud at the box office. While this was hardly ever a metric Lynch ascribed any value to, as he struggled to connect despite stretching his craft in new directions, something must have clicked for him at this moment, as the work that followed would come to represent the most maximalist excursions of his entire career, all done on his own terms.
“Mulholland Drive” began as a television project shot before “The Straight Story” made its debut, but was pushed forward by executives who wanted to know where it was going. Lynch couldn’t share this, because he most likely couldn’t even answer such a question. While its story involving amnesia and movie executives with a mob mentality 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 be reached feels like a lesson he could have only fully embraced by making the latter film.
Almost every aspect of the production, from working with longtime friend Sissy Spacek—wife of Lynch’s frequent production designer Jack Fisk—and Richard Farnsworth, who himself suffered from terminal metastatic prostate cancer during filming, to choosing to film in chronological order along the actual route Riding his lawnmower, Lynch worked to keep his heart as connected to his character’s journey as possible, thereby influencing the audience’s experience as well. Whether in the framing of Farnsworth’s world-weary gaze or the use of lightning and thunder to emphasize the emotional upheaval. Directly experiencing hearing his brother suffer a stroke, Lynch continually reveals his character’s grief in ways that replace the need for lengthy monologues or diatribes.
This confident grasp of performance, imagery and mise-en-scène translates not only to the dream-logic 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 character she works to embrace, “Inland Empire” has often been described as Lynch’s “Persona” or “8 1/2” as it tries analyze the filmmaker’s own relationship with the art he produces.
While it serves as a definitive collection of all the themes and concepts Lynch tackled throughout his career, what connects the viewer to each torn moment shown in the film and spun in multiple directions has more to do with our understanding of Lynch than the. do anything on the display. Even the wacky anthropomorphic bunnies make one think of all the holes Lynch is prone to get us down more than any meaning they might have in the context of the story. Again, when you think about “Inland Empire” through this lens, when Lynch fully embraces his whole self, you 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 makes him strive for more.
“We’re all capable of doing many kinds of things,” Lynch said in a 2006 interview with KGSM MediaCache“and that’s what you fall in love with.”
To bring it back to Lynch’s thematic cornerstone, while “Inland Empire” may mark a closure (or expansion, depending on how you look at it) of his cinematic dialogue, “Twin Peaks: The Return” holds the spot as his last work with Love. For perhaps 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, visual artist and human being at the wall of a dark fantasy. of mystery, comedy, horror and violence. But behind the quirks and bloodshed, what’s truly so captivating about “Twin Peaks: The Return” is the extremely obvious passion that comes from this reunion between Lynch and his most beloved collaborators, all of those who helped bring his wild visions to life.
Kyle MacLachlan, Lauren Dern and Naomi Watts all feature prominently, as well as much of the cast from 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 he passed away in 2017. Like Spacek, Farnsworth and Stanton’s appearances in ” The Straight Story” elevates the film beyond what just appears on the screen, as Lynch reunites with some of his closest friends and comrades for one final journey to the spellbinding allure and emotional weight of “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
If you love Lynch for “Eraserhead” and “Mulholland Drive,” then it’s understandable how, at face value, “The Straight Story” might seem like an unusual detour in his otherwise thoroughly freaky output. It does not deal with the surreal or the grotesque, but instead remains interested and attached to one man’s will and determination to put everything aside for the benefit of another. It’s hard not to feel that Lynch did the same for us as his audience, not only redefining how we experience film, but also how we interpret our own thoughts. His goal, if he had one at all, was to make us embrace the unknown and to face life not for its questions and answers, but for how we are drawn to each other despite the distance or personal desire that separates us.
In many ways, Lynch was not unlike Alvin Straight, who chose to take a road often traveled, but in a way that no other guy thought of; One that allowed him to see and feel life’s confusions and sensations—it’s ultimate beauties and twisted tragedies—for all that they were. The majesty of the stars of the night sky and the other worlds they suggest is a prominent feature of Lynch’s work, but perhaps most powerfully recognized in “The Straight Story” as what binds Alvin to his brother.
“The sky sure is full of stars tonight,” he says at one point, gazing up above. With Lynch a flicker up there now tooyou can rest easy knowing that the dark night just got a little brighter.
