Director: David Lynch
Screenplay: John Roach, Mary Sweeney
Starring: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Everett McGill, Harry Dean Stanton
Country: USA
Running Time: 112 min
Year: 1999
BBFC Certificate: U
In Wisconsin, elderly Lyle Straight has a stroke. 240 miles away in Iowa, his estranged younger brother Alvin (Farnsworth) is determined to visit Lyle after a decade of silence between them. Unfortunately he cannot drive, and is too stubborn to ask for help or rely on someone else to get him there. So he takes the only other logical option: he hitches a trailer to his ride-on lawnmower and sets out on a weeks-long voyage of sibling reconnection.
The Straight Story is often described as a very unusual film for David Lynch to have directed. As someone who is currently delving into Lynch’s work mostly for the first time (I’ve only got Inland Empire and Twin Peaks: The Return to go) I’m inclined to agree, as unlike most of Lynch’s work this has a strong central narrative that actually makes sense in our real world, without any mystical cowboys, rabbit sitcoms or children eating handfuls of creamed corn. I’m pretty sure The Straight Story doesn’t end with Alvin’s action throughout the film causing Lyle to have a stroke at the start of it, thereby causing Alvin to set out on the road trip and cause the stroke again. However, a tenuous grip on the possibilities of reality is not the only hallmark of a Lynch film, and The Straight Story is peppered with memorable characters, interesting faces and a delve into the setting at the forefront of Lynch’s obsession, small town America.
Alvin sets off from a town populated almost entirely by people even older and crankier than he is, and these scenes help establish his character as someone who, despite his advancing years, is handy, capable and owns a sharp mind, able to purchase items not for sale (he wants a grabber because he wants to do some grabbin’), and later he’ll haggle down an exorbitant repair price from two of Chris Farley’s brothers. Farnsworth fully inhabits the role, in one of those performances where it feels like the often thin layer between actor and character is essentially semi-permeable. It feels like he’s never truly acting, this is just who he is, and as it turned out Farnsworth was suffering from cancer at the time, so he may have been able to transfer some of that experience into his role. Either way, he absolutely should’ve won the Oscar he was nominated for.
As narratives go this is quite episodic, with Alvin stopping to converse with a collection of characters along the way, including a pregnant runaway teenager, a priest, some racing cyclists, a middle-aged family man, and a fellow World War II veteran. The one that sticks with me the most though is the Deer Woman (Barbara Robertson), who Alvin encounters after she has hit a deer driving on the road. Apparently she has hit multiple deer despite doing everything she can not to, but has to drive along that road in order to work. There’s definitely a message in there about a working life – or even just the act of commuting to and from it – resulting in the destruction of something you genuinely love. Or perhaps the message could be that she wouldn’t have killed so many deer if she were travelling at a speed more similar to Alvin’s lawn mower, but that our modern busy and full lives necessitate travelling faster. Either way, how Alvin chooses to deal with the situation felt very in character.
At times the film does drag a little, but that feels intentional. It’s not the kind of film to stick on if you’re already tired, as its meditative nature and relaxed pace will almost certainly lull you into a state of glancing at your phone, if not the inside of your eyelids. If you enjoyed the likes of Nebraska or The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry then you’ll enjoy this too, as if anything those films owe a great deal to The Straight Story. And if you don’t enjoy those films I still think The Straight Story is worth your time, as sometimes we just need to take a leaf from Alvin’s book, settle down and take things at our own pace for a while.
The Straight Story is available from Studiocanal on 4K UHD and Blu-Ray from today, February 9th 2026. Extras on the discs include an audio commentary by author Peter Tonguette, features on the score and making of the film, an interview with David Lynch and a behind the scenes image gallery.