BEFORE: I realize that I banned David Lynch movies from my blog about a year ago - around about the time the revival of "Twin Peaks" was airing and driving us all crazy - but I need this film tonight for the linking, to get me to my Memorial Day film. To be fair, my most recent experiences with David Lynch's movies prior to that included "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive" and I was feeling very manipulated by those films, where they didn't make much sense, characters changed their appearances or became other people somehow, completely subverting the narrative form. Then "Twin Peaks" sort of sealed the deal and got him banned, only Showtime was also running most of the rest of his filmography (must have been some kind of package deal) and I picked up this one then.
But, I've heard that it's his most narrative film, and that it probably contains very few instances of people visiting strange dimensions or being turned into furniture or having amnesia and turning out to be a completely different person than they thought they were. So here's hoping.
Sissy Spacek carries over from "North Country". I could have followed up with "Atomic Blonde", starring Charlize Theron, or "Kill the Messenger" with Jeremy Renner, or any number of films with Richard Jenkins, including "The Shape of Water", but it's better to stick with the plan, clear a nearly-unlinkable film off the list, and also set myself up for a Memorial Day war film tomorrow.
THE PLOT: An old man makes a long journey by lawnmower to mend his relationship with his ill brother.
AFTER: Other than being set in the Midwest, and containing Sissy Spacek, this film doesn't really have much in common with "North Country", which set out to make some key points about sexual harassment in the workplace, while this is just a simple story about a man who travels across Iowa on a lawnmower. I'd say there's a NITPICK POINT here, like, why doesn't he just take a bus or train? But the film has already beaten me to the punch, by giving some weird excuses about why he can't do that. Apparently he can't drive either, because his eyesight is so bad - sure, like that ever stopped a senior citizen from getting behind the wheel of a car. Senior citizens will keep driving, even after they're so shrunken that they can't see OVER the steering wheel! And none of them will ever admit that their eyesight is going, so that's not very believable.
This story is based on a true story, the real Alvin Straight did drive a lawnmower 240 miles across Iowa and into Wisconsin to see his brother, and the trip took about 6 weeks. Even though a riding mower is not intended for this purpose, and I think once you take a mower on to the streets, it might just qualify as a vehicle, so legally a license might have been required, despite Alvin's convenient logic. I still maintain that if he had taken the bus, he could have been there in one or two days, tops, so it still doesn't make much sense, except that this was a very proud and/or stubborn man.
I can almost see the sense in traveling with a small trailer full of items, it's just like the mower was pulling a big suitcase, one that he could sleep inside if he had to. A couple changes of clothes, cans of gasoline, a chair or two, what more does a man need? I know, I know, how about a cell phone in case of a breakdown? That might have helped, except this guy was 74, no way did he know how to use a cell, to him a cordless landline phone was high-tech.
Still, even though this might be Lynch's most "straight"forward narrative film, there are still elements of weirdness - like Sissy Spacek's character, the odd way she talks. I found her very hard to understand at first, speaking in choppy bursts of frenetic speech, but I'm assuming this was a conscious choice, to portray a character with some form of learning disability or autism or something. Perhaps this is just part of the story, but it calls Alvin's decision to travel to Wisconsin by mower into further question, because that means leaving his daughter alone for six weeks, and we're not sure if she can take care of herself.
This ended up being an appropriate choice for Memorial Day weekend, not just because it's about the beauty of America's heartland, but because at one point late in the journey, Alvin has a drink with a fellow older veteran, and recalls his time serving in Korea. He spins a yarn that takes us out of the journey for a few minutes and gets into the cloudy moralities of what it means to serve in a war and watch all of your buddies die.
But even with that in mind, I'm much more intrigued about Richard Farnsworth's career than I am about the back-story of an old farmer in Iowa. I mean, I get and appreciate that this gentle man talked to strangers along the way (this was back when you could talk to strangers without it turning into a political or racial debate...) and managed to change their lives with his folksy wisdom, and I appreciate all that, but the actor's back-story trumps everything else for me. A glance through his IMDB acting credits are incredibly impressive, starting with an uncredited role as a jockey in "A Day at the Races", and he played chariot drivers in both "The Ten Commandments" and "Ben-Hur"! Not to mention an uncredited role as a soldier in "Gone With the Wind", and then "Papillon" and "Blazing Saddles" in the 1970's. Then there's his stuntman work in everything from "The Caine Mutiny" to "Spartacus" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Man, I bet that guy had some great stories from Old Hollywood.
Also starring Richard Farnsworth (last seen in "The Wild One"), Harry Dean Stanton (last seen in "One From the Heart'), Everett McGill (last seen in "Licence to Kill"), Jane Galloway Heitz, Joseph Carpenter, Donald Wiegert, Ed Grennan, Jack Walsh, James Cada (also carrying over from "North Country"), Sally Wingert (ditto), Wiley Harker (last seen in "City Heat"), Bill McCallum, Barbara Kingsley, Kevin Farley (last heard in "Eight Crazy Nights"), John Farley (last seen in "Sandy Wexler"), Anastasia Webb, Matt Guidry, Barbara E. Robertson, Dan Flannery, John Lordan.
RATING: 6 out of 10
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