For me, The Straight Story is David Lynch’s best film because it succeeds wholly as the director’s “most experimental” work and manages to be one of those movies that WILL touch you no matter how you feel about his other work. The true story of Alvin Straight’s 200+ mile journey to visit his ailing brother on a riding lawn mower may seem well out of Lynch’s weird wheelhouse, but those of his fans and anyone with a good eye will see plenty of strangeness in the normal here that shows even the simplest of stories can be remarkable when told as well as done here.

Perhaps the most amusing and interesting thing about the movie to some will be it carries the Disney name on it (it was released under the company’s Buena Vista Pictures label back in 1999) and is rated G, usually two death knells for a director know for startling his audiences with bizarre imagery. Lynch keeps things more mundane here, but there are moments in performance and presentation where you can see bits of his trademark style on display and it doesn’t detract from the story at all…

Then again, it’s clear from the start that Alvin Straight (a wonderful performance by the late Richard Farnsworth) was a kind of unusual man in that he did things his way and his determination to see his trip through is something to be admired. We see him getting a diagnosis from his doctor at the beginning that is supposed to get him using a walker, but he’s not having any of that once he hears news his estranged brother has had a stroke. Straight’s vision is failing, he’s not a bus, train or plane guy and his mentally challenged daughter (Sissy Spacek) can’t drive at all, meaning Alvin needs to get mobile using his own ingenuity.

We see him fail on his first attempt when his old mower craps out (he actually shoots it afterwards) and thanks to a kind John Deere dealer (Everett McGill) get a second chance with a better (and discounted) model. Lynch methodically sets up the opening as Alvin gets ready to go and when he gets rolling out of town, the film rolls right along with him. Everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) clicks here as Straight’s poky mower and trailer combo draw looks and comments along the route and the people he meets along the way get some of his homespun words of wisdom borne from a life full of living in his skin.

As he’s older than most of the people he comes across in his travels, he ends up being a sort of Jedi master, drawling out nuggets that ring true and while not shown on screen, seem to actually change a few character’s lives after they spend a few minutes listening to him. That said, that poor lady with the jinked deer-killing car Alvin meets up with briefly? She may have some mighty lousy luck with wildlife, but her driving skills and terrible karma provide our man with a nice meal and trophy, so there’s that. It’s probably the most “non-G” thing in the film, but then again, Bambi’s mom got it but good in a scene that made many kids bawl like crazy and that film wasn’t even what, ten or fifteen minutes in?

Er, where was I again? Oh, right. Alvin’s trip isn’t without hazards, as weather and a later breakdown lead to more encounters with people who want to help him a lot more than he wants them to. These folks soon “get” Alvin’s way of thinking as well as his decision to long haul it his way and not take a faster route. One of the best scenes in a movie full of best scenes is when Alvin drops into a bar as his ride is being repaired and meets up with a fellow World War II veteran who buys him a beer. Straight tells a war story in his soft raspy voice that’s both quietly shocking and memorable. I recall seeing this in a theater the first time and watching some older gentleman in the row in front of me nodding after Alvin’s war story and whisper to no one in particular “Yep, it was like that for me…” as if to confirm his own untold stories from that time.

The cinematography is beautiful, as is Angelo Baldamenti’s moving score and it’s too bad that the film wasn’t nominated for more Academy Awards. Farnsworth’s performance made him a shoo-in for Best Actor, but he didn’t win and that’s a sad thing, as the actor was suffering from terminal bone cancer and took his own life at age 80. He was older than the actual Alvin Straight when he played him in the film and his lengthy career took him many many more miles, but both men did some mighty fine work while they were here, I’d say…