This may be a David Lynch film but it’s also noted as being the film that is the most unlike his established style, so much so that people kept asking what prompted him to make it. Indeed with its opening score by Angelo Badalamenti and an aerial shot that immediately brings to mind Twin Peaks, it feels like classic Lynch but then the story proper starts with its determinedly positive message, it’s such a sharp turnaround that it’s almost enough to give you whiplash.
After a bad fall at home, the aged Alvin Straight has greatly reduced mobility, needing to use two canes to get around. Despite his poor health, he refuses his doctor’s advice to quit smoking and is unwilling to use a walker. One day, he receives news that his estranged brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and decides that he needs to go visit him. However Lyle lives in the next state over and neither he nor his partially disabled daughter who lives with him is able to drive so far. So he buys some food, gathers some equipment and sets off on his lawnmower, pulling a trailer behind him. His first attempt fails and his old lawnmower breaks down not very far away and he has to be carried back into town. After shooting his old lawnmower he goes to a dealer to buy another one, actually another second-hand machine. This time he manages to get further and although he runs into difficulties along the way, he also meets many curious people who are more than happy to help him along his way.
As I noted, after the initial fake out, this film is as different from any other David Lynch film as it is possible to imagine. Not only does this have a straightforward, relatively simple story but there is none of the sinister overtones and that unusually pervade the director’s work. Instead the tone throughout is a unremittingly bright one as Alvin is invariably welcomed by the people he runs into and he in turn helps them by offering advice and stories from the life of an old man who has lived through the second world war. No one he meets tries to steal from him or take advantage of him, except perhaps a pair of twin brothers who overcharge a little after doing some repair work but they back down quickly enough when faced with Alvin’s shrewdness and it’s played off as a humorous incident. In fact, Alvin often turns away assistance, being determined to do things in his own curmudgeonly old man way. Based as it is on a real event, this film turns out to be so heartwarming and so positive, it’s no wonder this was released by Disney.
At the same time, Lynch truly is a master of cinema with his own unique style and so this film never becomes sentimentally cloying. The key here is that even though this is ultimately a happy story, Lynch successfully convinces us that these are real people with complicated pasts behind them. Alvin’s own wartime memories may be the dramatic example but everyone here carries baggage of their own, including his own daughter and the people he meets on the road. At the same time, everyone recognizes that Alvin’s journey is a genuinely tough one that involves real privation. Yet they don’t try too hard to dissuade him from it because they see that it is for him a kind of pilgrimage of atonement. While there is little overt darkness in this film, it’s still there beneath the surface, enriching the characters and elevating this above the usual sentimental feel-good stories.
Still as surprisingly good as this is, it’s still Lynch’s usual style that makes him such a distinctive director. It really is great to see that he has it in him to make something more conventional like this as well, and I do recommend it. But it’s also true that if this is all that he does, he would not be as famous as he is today.