David Lynch
Una Storia Vera

Autumn 1994. 73-year-old Alvin Straight sets off on a lawnmower with a trailer from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin, covering about 500 km in 6 weeks to visit his brother Lyle, who had a heart attack, and with whom he hasn't spoken for ten years. Simple, right? Absolutely not.

At first glance, 'The Straight Story' may appear to be a simple film, but it is not. In fact, while in previous works the ending would restore the initial picture of serenity disrupted by the events of the film, in this feature film this destruction of order, this succumbing to chaos, this descent into the "maelstrom," simply does not happen. It is no longer a matter of portraying characters confronting their own ghosts of violence and domination, but of depicting a seemingly SIMPLE, honest, direct, true story, as highlighted by the Italian title of the film and as evoked by the name of the protagonist himself (which in English refers to the adjectives listed). The director warns us, from the liner notes accompanying the CD containing the film's soundtrack (composed as usual by Angelo Badalamenti), that "TENDERNESS CAN BE AS ABSTRACT AS MADNESS." One could then, by taking Lynch's statement to its extreme consequences, talk about 'The Straight Story' as an "abstract" film, in the sense that it tends to represent an inner world, devoid of relationship with objective reality. A perhaps idealized, "romanticized" world. Certainly not very realistic despite appearances.

The semantic universe of the road movie is completely emptied of meaning. This road movie is thus forced into slowness, semi-paralysis (after all, doesn't the protagonist himself move with the help of 2 canes?) Lynch constructs a narrative punctuated by Straight's encounters on his journey to Mount Zion, which stand as many stations in the man's journey. During these encounters, Straight recalls the past, dispenses advice, comments on the sadness of old age, sometimes his life lessons are almost imbued with a bourgeois moralism unusual for a Lynch film. But one should not be misled by the "Disney" label attached to this film by American distributors or some critics: The Straight Story is not a "true story"; or rather, it is only because it is based on a true event. But the film almost never falls under the sign of realism, if for no other reason than the slowness of its pace is today impossible elsewhere, both in reality and in cinema.

ONCE AGAIN LYNCH'S CHOICE IS IN SHARP CONTRAST TO THE "NORM". Dedicated to those who think that: "There is nothing inherently sublime in a sublime object." Lynch gives the viewer time to be enchanted by a myriad of "sublime" objects: the starry sky, the storm, a field of wheat, a bottle of beer, the old lawnmower, and even the laundry hanging out!