The Straight Story

* * * *

Cast: Richard Farnshworth, Sissy Spacek

Director: David Lynch

Rating: G

Running time: 111 minutes

Opens: Thursday, Rialto cinemas

Review: Russell Baillie


It begins with some worrying words: "Walt Disney films presents a film by David Lynch." The Mouse company behind America's onetime favourite celluloid surrealist? What has got into either of them?

Well, it could be that someone asked him - perhaps despairingly, considering Lynch's increasingly self-parodying 90s output - why don't you just do a straight story? If this oddly delightful stuck-in-first-gear road movie is Lynch's answer, then bully for whoever posed the question.

Simply put, it's about an elderly man who drives a ride-on mower 500 miles across the American Midwest to patch things up with his estranged and ailing brother. That sure does takes a while, not helped by Alvin Straight's (Farnsworth) false start when his first mower falters (humanely, he shoots it). But roar away he eventually does, bid farewell by daughter Rose (Spacek playing Lynch's trademark character-with-funny-voice).

Trailer in tow, Straight heads across a big-skied slice of America that's sparsely populated not by Lynch's usual weirdos, but salt-of-the-earth types who warm to Alvin and his two-stroke quest.

That might risk an overdose of homespun whimsy but avoids it neatly, care of Farnsworth's unadorned and Oscar-nominated performance and the movie's meditative pace. It allows plenty of time to take in both the wheatfield scenery and the folk that our intrepid lawnmower man meets along the way.

There's plenty of offbeat humour and hints of Alvin's darker past during this quietly surreal road movie, but it's also genuinely charming without trying anything cute.

It should leave old Lynch fans nicely perplexed. Not only has he told it straight, the man who made his name with the acts of a freak show imagination has made a film about several acts of kindness and one long-distance act of love.