In honor and celebration of the life and work of the late filmmaker David Lynch, please join us for a *free* screening of one of his best and least-seen films, “The Straight Story” (1999). No tickets required!
THE STRAIGHT STORY | 1999 | DIRECTOR: David Lynch | WITH: Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, Harry Dean Stanton, Everett McGill | RUNNING TIME: 1H 52M | RATED G: No offensive material | DIGITAL 2K PROJECTION
A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight learns one day that his distant brother Lyle has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver’s license.
Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual journey. Will he succeed?
“The first time I saw “The Straight Story,” I focused on the foreground and liked it. The second time I focused on the background, too, and loved it. The movie isn’t just about the old Alvin Straight’s odyssey through the sleepy towns and rural districts of the Midwest, but about the people he finds to listen and care for him. You’d think it was a fantasy, this kindness of strangers, if the movie weren’t based on a true story.
“Because the film was directed by David Lynch, who usually deals in the bizarre (“Wild at Heart,” “TwinPeaks”), we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop–for Alvin’s odyssey to intersect with the Twilight Zone. But it never does. Even when he encounters a potential weirdo, like the distraught woman whose car has killed 14 deer in one week on the same stretch of highway (“. . . and I HAVE to take this road!”), she’s not a sideshow exhibit and we think, yeah, you can hit a lot of deer on those country roads.” Roger Ebert
Admission to this screening is FREE and no tickets are required. The movie will be introduced by Cosford Cinema manager Rene Rodriguez, who will discuss the importance of Lynch’s filmography to contemporary American cinema.
