The first time I watched The Straight Story, my grandmother was still alive.
It was Christmas of 2020, just under a year since she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We knew she was going to die; the question was when. Covid had nixed our plans for a final escape to the Italian Riviera – classed as ‘extremely vulnerable’, Audrey had spent most of that year within the confines of her house, leaving only for monthly chemotherapy appointments and hospital check-ups. She was in remarkably good spirits despite the illness, which had spread throughout her body with remarkable tenacity, but – as was her way – remained restless. Once her oncologist chastised her for moving furniture around days after having chemo. “But it needs moving,” she replied reasonably. “Ask your grandson!” countered my exasperated mother.
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Audrey was a ruthlessly practical woman; an expert sewer and gardener, keen videographer, talented artist and devoted letter-writer. She was endlessly compassionate, took forever to do her weekly supermarket shop, once set her kitchen on fire (long before I was born) and possessed a sort of otherworldly grace that I have only seen a few times in my life.
I have no idea if my grandmother ever saw a David Lynch film. She was a woman of particular taste: her favourite opera was La traviata, but she was also fond of Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and police procedurals including Bergerac and Homicide: Life on the Street. But I believe she would have very much liked The Straight Story, and would have agreed with me that Richard Farnsworth as Alvin Straight is a dead ringer for her husband Alan. (Coincidentally, all three share the initials A.S.)
Farnsworth knew he was dying when he agreed to play the role. In fact, he’d initially turned it down because of the pain he experienced due to his cancer diagnosis, but Lynch (as was his way) managed to convince him, and made accommodations for his frailty on set. It’s just as well – the film hinges on the sadness in Farnsworth’s watery blue eyes and the soft lilt of his worn cowboy growl. But in the gaps between Angelo Badalamenti’s wistful score, it’s most often his face, not his voice, that fills the frame.
A face with contours and cracks, liver spots and wrinkles and a fine white beard – a face with a thousand stories written in its foundations. Lynch had an eye for cinematic faces; Laura Dern’s scream in Inland Empire, Robert Blake’s smile in Lost Highway and Carel Struycken’s stare are all cast in the amber of his career. But it’s Richard Farnsworth’s eyes I remember the most, focused somewhere off to the side, recalling a life we aren’t quite privy to. We learn some of Alvin’s stories in glimpses as his John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor putters down the highway, but by and large, everything we need to know is right before our eyes.
There are many moments of profound empathy and beauty in The Straight Story (Alvin’s exchange with the bickering brother mechanics who fix his lawnmower; sharing his meagre rations with a young teenage runaway) but it’s not a purely sentimental film. There’s darkness too (Alvin and Verlyn trade horrific experiences in the trenches of the Second World War; Alvin’s run-in with a hysterical woman who keeps accidentally hitting deer with her car). It’s as Lynch always had it: there cannot be light without darkness. But there is always light.
When Alvin finally reaches his brother Lyle’s porch, he calls out to him and is met by silence. Was his six-week journey in vain? But then Lyle finally appears – the pair sit down on his porch together. When Lyle, incredulous, asks if Alvin came all the way on “that thing”, Alvin responds: “Yes Lyle. I did.” They gaze up at the stars in silence.
Farnsworth died in October 2000 by suicide, due to the pain caused by his cancer. My grandma passed away in hospice care in March 2022, having stubbornly doubled the year that her doctor had given her to live. After she died, my grandfather went into a decline, and eventually moved into supported living. When we cleared their house to sell it to pay for his care fees, we discovered hundreds of my grandma’s letters, birthday cards, and weathered tourist maps from holidays taken decades before. I picked up the cardboard sleeve from a box of cookies I’d brought her back from a holiday to Los Angeles, folded neatly with the date and location of my trip written in her distinctive cursive on the back. “Why on earth did she keep that?” I asked no one in particular.
But I understand now – she kept every souvenir for the same reason Alvin Straight drove all that way on a lawnmower to visit his brother just to look at the stars together. Just as we look to the sky for magic despite knowing the science, we hold onto small scraps of the past in hopes they might help us understand the present. The Straight Story remains the most tender proof that no matter the pace, we can always move forward towards a brighter tomorrow.
To commemorate the life and creative legacy of the peerless filmmaker David Lynch, Little White Lies has brought together writers and artists who loved him to create ‘In Heaven Everything Is Fine‘: a series celebrating his work. We asked participants to respond to a Lynch project however they saw fit – the results were haunting, profound, and illuminating.
