WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Visionary director David Lynch is remembered and famous for many movies, such as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire, just to name a few.
To me though, his absolute masterpiece is and remains the less known, underrated The Straight Story.
It is indeed an atypical film in many ways, for David Lynch.
His usual visionary, oniric approach is in fact much less evident here, this being, to me at least, and advantage more than a downside.
The story revolves around Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), a real iconic movie character, and his journey and quest for his long lost brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton), that will only briefly appear in the last, truly emotional, scene of the movie.
Richard Farnsworth's interpretation of the movie leading role is incredibly convincing.
The actor was even nominated for an Academy Award for this role (unfortunately and unfairly, the Oscar that year went to Kevin Spacey for American Beauty, in any case another great movie and impeccable performance).
The great Sissy Spacek is equally shining, portraying Alvin's somehow both handicapped and intuitive daughter, Rose.
Following Lynch direction and Farnsworth and Spacek acting, the filming locations are probably the fourth key element to this movie.
"Outside is America" (as in U2's song "Bullet the blue sky"), and what we see in The Straight Story is the REAL America, the rural country, the province and its endless spaces.
The main part of the plot is an unusual road trip, from Laurens, Iowa to Mt. Zion, Wisconsin, as Alvin decides to leave his home and be on the road, to try and reach his brother Lyle.
Finally, we have the peculiar transport that Alvin is forced to adopt for his trip: a small, old John Deere tractor (one of the last true symbols of rural United States itself).
This is what turns a trip that would otherwise be perfectly normal into an epic journey.
At the slow speed allowed by his tractor, in fact, Alvin will need several weeks to reach his final destination.
Time is therefore dilated for him, he starts to live in a kind of parallel, relativistic world where his slow speed quickly becomes a state of mind, both for him and for who watches the movie.
This is probably the most precious element of The Straight Story, as the message that becomes more and more clear is that probably Alvin's speed is or should be the right one, for the entire world, and not the other way around.
Another fundamental message coming from the movie is a low key but very strong condemnation of any war, when old Alvin meets a contemporary.
Both fought in War World II, and both realize how those war experiences, if tens of year far in the past, are still with them and still affect their true nature deeply.
To make a long story short, The Straight Story is a small jewel, probably forgotten by many, that still brilliantly resists to the test of time and that's still as fresh and important as when it originally premiered, in 1999.
Everyone should see this movie at least once and let a small place in their heart and memory for the great Alvin Straight.
