Place and Patterning

Elderly Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) makes the big decision to travel more than 300 miles to visit his ailing brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). Due to his own deteriorating health, Alvin is unable to drive a car; doggedly, he determines to make the trek by the unusual and time-consuming method of riding a sit-on lawnmower across country. The great distance in miles is met by the extent of the men’s emotional separation, of the 30 years they have chosen to remain apart. As the film focuses on Alvin’s travels from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin, it presents a journey of immense personal importance over the awesome terrains of the American Midwest. Certain critics have alluded to the film’s handling of matters of magnitude within one man’s personal Odyssey. Stanley Kauffmann proclaims that ‘Lynch has made a small epic’ (1999: 28). Rather opaquely (though beautifully), Wesley Morris sees The Straight Story as ‘A journey film kissed by tiny magic’ (1999). Both remarks touch upon a key relationship in the film, of grand-scale matters (the ‘epic’ nature of this ‘journey film’) measured out in diminutive detail (the ‘small’ and ‘tiny magic’). This chapter explores the intricate facets of this relationship at work, of a significant journey formed through an accrual of illuminating moments.