Why The Straight Sto­ry remains one of the great Amer­i­can road movies

The B‑sides of a filmmaker’s body of work are often the most inter­est­ing; freed a lit­tle from what might typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­terise their sto­ry­telling. David Lynch’s The Straight Sto­ry is one such film. Released by Walt Dis­ney Stu­dios, the company’s name front and cen­tre, the film is an ode to the plea­sures of slow storytelling.

The Straight Sto­ry drama­tis­es an event that occurred in 1994 when sep­tu­a­ge­nar­i­an Alvin Straight (por­trayed by Richard Farnsworth, who had once worked as a stunt­man) drove about 250 miles from his home to vis­it his ail­ing broth­er. Alvin did not own a car and so made the jour­ney by tractor.

It is wild­ly dif­fer­ent to David Lynch’s pre­vi­ous road movie, Wild at Heart, yet has moments which sim­i­lar­ly cap­ture a sense of real­i­ty falling out of kil­ter very quick­ly: notice how neat­ly con­struct­ed the scene is in The Straight Sto­ry when Alvin encoun­ters a dri­ver who has, once again, had a road­kill moment.

Lynch’s pro­duc­er, Mary Swee­ny, read the screen­play by John E Roach that would became The Straight Sto­ry and was con­fi­dent that Lynch would recog­nise the poten­tial in it. When the movie was ini­tial­ly released in 1999, Swee­ny, an inter­view with The Los Ange­les Times, made a use­ful point about the film appar­ent­ly being an anom­aly in Lynch’s fil­mog­ra­phy, com­ment­ing that ​“dys­func­tion isn’t the only thing out there. He is pigeon­holed as the mas­ter of weird, but is much more.”

This is a film about mov­ing slow­ly and gen­tly in a hard and fast world and, as oth­ers have observed, in this respect it’s akin to the films of Yasu­jirō Ozu. Like many of Ozu’s movies, The Straight Sto­ry qui­et­ly charts the pains of time’s pass­ing and what the idea of a fam­i­ly means in both its poten­tial for joy and for sor­row. The film’s moods shift eas­i­ly from melan­choly to glimpses of fleet­ing con­tent­ment in very ordi­nary sit­u­a­tions and Alvin’s evi­dent glad­ness at being alone in the Amer­i­can landscape.

In clas­sic Amer­i­can road trip fash­ion, Alvin has bro­ken free of the con­fines of the rou­tine world as he pass­es through rur­al Amer­i­ca. The images of fields, of high­ways and gen­tly ris­ing and falling ground sug­gests some­thing of the ways in which the tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can paint­ing has informed the tra­di­tion of Amer­i­can moviemak­ing. Lynch is a painter by train­ing and The Straight Sto­ry is one of his most evoca­tive and immer­sive canvases.

Here, the every­day is where the epipha­nies roll in and out of view and one of the most affect­ing of these cen­tres around Alvin’s encounter with a young woman who has fled home to avoid the fam­i­ly fall­out around her preg­nan­cy. After ini­tial­ly rid­ing past her as she stands on the road­side the sequence then dis­solves to sun­set and a sil­hou­ette of ground against the sun­set sky. Anoth­er shot shows Alvin sit­ting on a gar­den chair by a camp­fire he has made. Out of the dark­ness emerges the woman say­ing that she couldn’t get a ride. ​“Are you hun­gry?” Alvin asks, and in the solace of the camp­fire he and the young woman ten­ta­tive­ly converse.

No music under­scores the scene and it’s not too much of a leap to imag­ine that it could have been deployed. Alvin explains, ​“I’m head­ing to see my broth­er, Lyle.” While the con­ver­sa­tion is a lit­tle fal­ter­ing there’s a warmth to it and the pause and silences feel true to life. Alvin offers the young woman a blan­ket from the trail­er and there is anoth­er pro­longed silence before he adds, ​“My fam­i­ly hates me.” Alvin endeav­ours to pro­vide some com­fort as she explains her sit­u­a­tion and he talks about his daugh­ter Rose, rue­ful­ly relat­ing some­thing of her ear­li­er life.

As he does the scene dis­solves, tak­ing us from the camp­fire and to a shot of a cur­tain gen­tly lift­ing on a breeze at a win­dow as the cam­era moves slow­ly around the room before the image dis­solves again to show Rose sit­ting alone look­ing out of a win­dow in which we see her face reflect­ed. Now, we hear Ange­lo Badalamenti’s musi­cal score at work and it enrich­es the scene. Alvin’s rec­ol­lec­tion ends and the scene returns us back to the camp­fire. In an attempt to break the melan­choly mood, Alvin recalls a game he used to play with his chil­dren and in doing so the entire heart­beat of the film is at its loudest.

In 1999 a good friend of mine – a life­long Lynch enthu­si­ast – went to see The Straight Sto­ry as soon as it was released in the UK. Lat­er, he told me how it moved him to tears. It’s one of those films that seems to res­onate more the old­er you get. It’s a film about love and, to quote Blanche DuBois, the kind­ness of strangers.

The Straight Sto­ry marks a pas­sage of time and the regrets and hap­pi­ness that inevitably accu­mu­late along the way. But, where it could have done all this with some qui­et sound and fury, Lynch eschews it. Instead, like Alvin, his film sets out on its mis­sion in its own unas­sum­ing way and; invit­ing as those camp­fire flames around which so many sto­ries have been told.