The Straight Story Details

The Fish is still in the Percolator

This is far from being as simple as many people assume. OK, the man is called Straight, this is his story, and it's told "straight" rather than in the Moebius strip style of "Lost Highway", but it's still a David Lynch film and that means the word "straight" is used in an deeply ironic sense also. Watch this film with the same eye as you would bring to "Eraserhead" or "Mulholland Drive" and a different story may emerge.

For a start, Alvin's journey is a metaphor for a man's whole life - the first person we see is a fat woman on a sunbed, there is a thump and we meet Alvin helpless on the floor. As his journey progresses the people he meets represent advancing stages of life, until near the end we find him in a cemetary.

Then there are the typically Lynchian motifs - a house on fire, a distressed woman by the road who has run over 14 deer (the same number as Alvin had kids), a mother separated from her children. If the film is being told to us from Alvin's point of view, just what is he keeping hidden from us (and perhaps from himself)?

Lynch has fun with the slow pace of the movie and with the quietness of midwestern life, but don't be fooled, there is surrealism and subtext at work here too, just much less overtly than in his other films.

[Highly rated reviewer]

A wee gem

This was a very gentle movie of one man's perseverance through all sorts of trials with lots of home truths thrown in.

I couldn't really believe that this was directed by David Lynch of Twin Peaks fame as it was so peaceful - tho it did have quite a few quirky moments.

Conveyed a great impression of the vastness of the prairie belt of mid-west America and often resembled the paintings of Andrew Wyeth and of 'American Gothic'

Wonderful. Could watch this sort of feel good, heart warming movie every night.