‘The Straight Story’ – by David Lynch (with Richard Farnsworth)
.
“When I catch an idea for a film,
I fall in love with the way cinema can express it.”
~ David Lynch
.
Have you ever seen a film made of love? Well, I have. And no further than this morning. A modest, not very well-known masterpiece by David Lynch, called ‘The Straight Story’. It is based on a true story: In 1994 in the United States, Alvin Straight — an old man — decides to pay a visit to his brother who has just suffered a stroke. They haven’t spoken for ages, out of an old rancour, so he wants to repair and reunite. With a clear mind, he embarks on a 390 kilometres journey from Laurens, Iowa, to Mount Zion in the Wisconsin, but he does it in his own inimitable way. On a riding lawn mower!… With bad hips and two sticks for help, and a refusal of doctors. With a maximum speed of about 8 kms per hour, and a trailer to pull. And with love as a luggage.
As often when it comes to starting a spiritual journey, it all begins with a fall and the subsequent realisation that something needs to be changed. And in order to make our quest a successful one, we have to make the journey just as important as the destination. And this is what Alvin does. His trip becomes an occasion for adventure. Everything he meets, he does with the eyes of wonder, and the now is the only time in which his travel takes place. Everything is important. Everything matters. The journey is not just a means to an end. We don’t reach infinity step by step anymore than we meet eternity in time. Every meeting with truth is made in truth’s home. And every encounter with our true nature is made within, in and as our innermost sense of being. No matter the extent of our understanding, in order to be, we have to be being. And Alvin, clearly, knows it all too well.
So every meeting on the road is for him an occasion for friendship and love. Every tempest an opportunity for shelter. Every breakdown a possibility for repair. And every drink shared at a bar’s counter a necessity for opening his heart. It is the same with our lives. One day, we come to learn that no matter the conditions of our life, no matter how small or broken it has turned out to be, it remains an occasion for profound joy and meaning. No event will be discovered to be so small, or insignificant, as to not recede and embrace the immensity of just being. Profound happiness emanates from the simple fact of being only being, and this is something that we can discover with every circumstance we find ourself in. Alvin teaches us just that: that eternity lives at every single moment of our life. That we’ve got to be interested in every single thing that comes uninvited, and that manifests in and as our present experience. For there are jewels to be uncovered at every given moment, and our life is nothing but the conscious and continuous harvesting of joy, happiness, and beauty wherever they live. Life then becomes a miraculous fishing, if we know where to dip our line and live in the constant vicinity of our deepest self.
‘The straight story’ is a title filled with significance, for ‘straight’ is both the name of our hero, and a manual for the journey towards understanding. Alvin’s behaviour and quest is straight to the point. And this is what the spiritual endeavour consists of, in going straight to our sense of being, in heading directly to our intended target: plainly being. For being is a simple and straightforward thing, that requires us to be clear, bold, steady, honest, logical, and serious, all qualities defined by the word ‘straight’. Then you will find yourself being totally engaged in your journey, just like Alvin is. You will find yourself in love, which means loving out of simply being. And you will find your world adorned with beauty, which is nothing but love encountered when applied to things. And you will be in a state of creativity, for you are a recipient for infinity and its myriad of possibilities, which have no need for incarnation. And you will feel peaceful as does one who lives in the security of his or her beloved’s home. And you’ll be blessed with joy, which is the contentment born of being just what you are. And steeped in gratefulness, thanking every situation as if chosen as the best you could ever have dreamt for. And filled with wonder, seeing every happening as being especially designed for you by god’s skilful hands. And don’t forget: this is literal. This is how we feel when our life has taken the straight road to simply being.
After a journey of patient and steadfast travelling, Alvin finds his brother Lyle’s home. He lives in an old shed in the woods. Our true self is always at first like an old shed in the woods. It has nothing fancy because it is a place of inner poverty, devoid of everything objective, that life has taught us to be so important and worth going for. So to properly visit that shed, we have to enter empty handed and naked. Naked of all objective qualities, of all that thoughts, feelings, and sense perceptions can bring us in terms of a self, or a momentary happiness. This fabricated self is an illusion. And this happiness is a form of escape, and a postponement. Alvin’s journey of humble apprenticeship has prepared him for this meeting in humility. And a meeting with the blessing of infinity is what awaits us in the shed. It is what awaits us when we realise our identity with being, and have therefore stopped veiling it. We understand that happiness resides not in what a fake, invented self wishes to reach or avoid, but rather in what is present now as pure, unavoidable being. This is a meeting face to face with ‘what is’, and with what we truly are. And that is nothing but a shed for a glorious reconciliation.
.
‘The Straight Story’ – by David Lynch (with Richard Farnsworth)
.
~~~
Film by David Lynch (1946-2025)
Text by Alain Joly
~~~
.
‘The Straight Story’, 1999 – Directed by David Lynch
Based on the true story of Alvin Straight
Edited and produced by Mary Sweeney
Photography by Freddie Francis – Music by Angelo Badalamenti
(With actors Richard Farnsworth, Sissy Spacek, and Harry Dean Stanton…)
Buy DVD
David Lynch (1946-2025) is an American filmmaker, musician, painter, and actor. His work as an artist is diverse and profound, with many films distinguished for their surrealist qualities. Amongst his ten major feature films, we find masterpieces such as ‘Eraserhead’ (1977), ‘The Elephant Man’ (1980), ‘Blue Velvet’ (1986), and ‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001). His film ‘Wild at Heart’ (1990) earned the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Festival. He is a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM), and has written a lovely book about his art and spirituality, ‘Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity’.
.
A trailer of the film ‘The Straight Story’ is available here on YouTube…
Bibliography:
– ‘Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity’ – by David Lynch – (Michael Joseph)
Websites:
– The Straight Story (Wikipedia)
– David Lynch (Wikipedia)
.
Back to Pages
.
The Dawn Within 