The Real Odyssey
As the hype cycle builds up for the forthcoming Christopher NolanMAX grandeur that will be the adaptation of Homer’s 8BC epic The Odyssey, it’s easy to get swept up in the perspective that all Man’s escapades have to be about huge tales of intense adventure and conquest, heroically fighting literal gods and monsters to save the day or win the hand of the maiden.
Given that all these stories were themselves birthed by mere mortals, it makes sense that these quests are pure projections of the struggles and demons within us all. The trials, tribulations and at times painful monotony of existence becoming the ceaseless tasks the supposed immortals (maybe our subconscious) inflict upon us to test our convictions, our limits, ready to measure our sacrifices. What price are you willing to pay to leave that purgatory, the atonement you will endure to arrive at salvation, or penance for acknowledging the deeds you tried to pave over and forget, yet the cracks grow bigger every day as the memories, unconcerned, push through the stone. You can’t just plaster over the fractures, you need to put in the work and remove the cause of the damage.
While doing a 180º on the scale of the colossal saga tropes, David Lynch saw the very same hero’s journey when he read the script by his then wife Mary Sweeney on the subject of Alvin Straight, and his somewhat idiosyncratic 1994 expedition across 390 km from Laurens, Iowa to Mt Zion in Wisconsin. It might not seem like the subject for a movie, except for the fact that Alvin’s mode of transport was a decades old lawn tractor, with a disproportionately large home-built wooden box trailer hitched on to the back of it, somewhat akin to the cursed Sisyphus who was condemned to roll the giant rock up a hill every day for eternity.
Stocked with shelf loads of store-bought weiners, and an internal reservoir bursting its banks with stoic stubbornness, Alvin set out to find his long lost brother, and himself, in effectively a drive of shame, on the road to hopeful redemption.
The Straight Story (1999) was just a couple of years after Lynch’s sinister, dark and mysterious noir-nightmare Lost Highway (1997), and it couldn’t be the further away, subject wise. But as in the old adage, sometimes you have to travel through hell (the horror) to see the light, The Straight Story absolutely is that shining star in the darkness.
Aptly the film opens with such a scene of distant stars, randomly scattered throughout the sky, the home of the gods, before dissolving into the ‘controlled’ world of Man and a vast landscape of tilled rows of farmland, where working people struggle to instil structure upon the world around them. Like descending deities gently floating down to play with mortals, we drift into a small forgotten era called Laurens in Iowa. It looks straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, as if the Americana painter turned director for a day, bringing the nostalgia of a typical rural small town to life.
As the entity lowers, slowly leaning closer, the focus gently sweeps and glides towards an ordinary working-class house on a hot day. The whole delicate drift and sunny saturated colours of everything are very reminiscent of Glinda entering the scene in The Wizard of Oz, which Lynch also had threaded throughout his 1990 gem of a film Wild at Heart, where once again, he was more than happy to enlist traits of fantasy to help a story navigate our emotional heartstrings. A somewhat shrewd technique considering how many years of our youth is indoctrination via fairytales in books and films. And do we ever really grow out of them?
Also like a lot of his films, under the candy colours often hide darkness, in life, humanity and society. The camera beautifully continues the panning to a darkened sunscreened window, where we hear a brief scuffle and thump. Something, or someone has fallen to the ground, possibly dead, and the epic begins.
Alvin is old, and ill of health, through years of graft, service and sheer exhaustion of perseverance. Each year has had its suffering, but also teachings. Distilling and honing mortal focus to what actually counts, and most importantly, what doesn’t.
His life is simple, out of financial circumstance, necessity, loss and plain stoic stubbornness, decades thick in rings of protective armour that defends what little he has left, and in the knowledge he won’t have it for much longer.
A storm arrives in the form of lightning and news that his brother Kyle, who he hasn’t spoken to in 10 years has suffered a stroke. By any means necessary, he must travel to see him before it’s too late.
Richard Farnsworth was first choice to play the 73-year-old Alvin, literally a role he was born to play, and sadly soon died after. Richard was terminally ill with metastatic prostate cancer at the time of filming, but as he felt so close to the character, he was compelled to do the film. Such is the richness and depth of his performance and the situation of his actual life, it often feels like the character and reality blur into an enhanced reality, beautifully captured forevermore. There is an added real life joy in that Farnsworth had started his career as a stuntman on westerns, so spent years riding horses, and now was bookmarking his career on his trusty iron horse steed John Deere, regardless of its diminutive size.
When Alvin hears the news of his brother from his daughter Rose (the amazing Sissy Spacek), the emotion he exudes is a lifetime of suffering, that transcends acting, instantly putting you back to a moment when you shared a similar experience. Unless you are a sociopath, you would do anything to relieve his pain, give him some peace. And this is just the beginning of the film.
The journey Alvin and the audience take is nothing short of absolute beauty, but one that doesn’t mask the pains of living through it. There is a doggedness and profound grace to Alvin that Farnsworth not only captures, but embodies in every look, and struggle to walk, which wasn’t acting at all. The same grit he enacts to complete the journey is the same as finishing the film. It’s not that the lines have blurred, they are gone.
Clearly there’s a magic to this, what is a effectively a fairytale born from reality, steered with tender love and respect by Lynch and all involved, but especially by the rich script that is deeply colloquial and a bountiful harvest of gorgeous moments, enacted by phenomenal character actors peppered along the way to Zion. So many wonderful tender gentle moments, tiny conversations that have effectively been shared in different ways our entire existence.
Heightening all this and the radiant cinematography by Freddie Francis is a magical score by regular collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, simultaneously echoing the fantasy and cowboy Americana with utter grace, care and affection for the subject and the people of this land. Considering the state of the US at the present time, the sweeping kindness that is on show in the film makes it feel all the more like a long lost wistful dream. It feels like another world.
When this film came out in the cinema, I adored it, instantly becoming one of my favourite films ever. It’s such a universal meditation on life, with all its smiles, bumps and bruises that it deftly weaves the best and worst of Man. I went to see it a few times, bringing different people to work its magic on, which of course it did.
Once again, if you’ve never seen the movie, it’s best to go in completely blind, having not read anything of detail (other than this review of course), not watching the trailer either, just trusting not only the destination, but absolutely the journey. To not be affected by it should raise concern about your interaction with life.
Recapturing the radiance of it all is STUDIOCANAL’s new 4K restoration, overseen by Lynch himself. To say it is beautiful is to do it a disservice, it is simply glorious. Every frame a story, a deep warm caring and supportive hug, with plenty of smiles, love and laughter. Part pit-stop, part meditation and above all the best of humanity, irrespective of its dark edges. It is the aw-shucks and awe of our ability to evolve, if we are willing to put in the effort. That exact effort is also shown and discussed on a delightful batch of extra interviews as part of the package, only adding to the warmth of the entire story, from all angles.
As Alvin sets off on his pilgrimage, one of his friends full of concern cries ‘He’ll never make it past the grotto’, which transpires to be a local landmark construction called the Shrine of the Grotto of the Redemption. It couldn’t be more apt for a marker and goal to set oneself. They foolishly underestimated the power of conviction, family and Alvin.
There is so much we can, and still learn from multiple viewings of this enchanting jewel of a film.
The Straight Story 4K is released now via STUDIOCANAL.