‘A gentle poetry in the everyday’: why The Straight Story is my feelgood movie

What was your gateway into the Lynchian empire? Maybe it was the elliptical horror of Mulholland Drive, with its labyrinth of dream and deceit. Perhaps it was the small-town banality of Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet, the gee-whiz vernacular and cherry-pie dispositions hiding a malice so pure behind those white picket fences. Or was it Wild at Heart, that nightmarish road movie where oddballs and deviants lurk at every bend, Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern tearing through America with unbridled passion and violence?

Weirdly, it was none of those for me. In fact, my introduction to David Lynch contained not one drop of sexual depravity or grisly malevolence. The film was The Straight Story and I was 15. Released in May 1999, it tells the real-life tale of Alvin Straight, a 73-year-old second world war vet who rode a lawnmower 300 miles across the midwest to reconcile with his ailing brother. While the title obviously names the main character, it also invites you to take Lynch at his word: that this is that fabled chronicler of the demented and the macabre playing it straight(ish). Think of it as Lynch does Disney: a family-friendly hymn to Americana, sparse and only a little bit strange, finding a gentle poetry in the everyday.