Film

The Straight Story

David Lynch working almost entirely against type: no surrealism, no dread, just an old man driving a lawnmower across two states to make peace with his dying brother. Farnsworth's performance is plain and enormous, and the film is slow, generous, and moved by ordinary kindness. For anyone who thinks Lynch only does nightmares, this is the gentle corrective.

TMDb rating3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like slow, unhurried road stories where small human gestures carry more weight than plot, and you don't mind a gentle film that lets quiet moments breathe.

Skip it if you need momentum and sharp dialogue, because this moves at the pace of a lawnmower and its conversations often drift into long, plain-spoken silences.

What it asks of you: Settle in for nearly two hours at a walking pace, with ample room for landscapes and long pauses to do the talking, and no urgency to hurry things along.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Nebraska2013

Same deadpan tenderness, same flat Midwestern light: an old man insists on a pointless, stubborn road trip, and his son tags along not knowing what he'll find at the end. Bruce Dern is magnificent.

But Black-and-white and bone-dry; if you need warmth up front rather than earned slowly, it can feel chilly.

Nebraska poster

About Schmidt2002

Jack Nicholson's retired actuary hits the road in an RV, furious and grieving and funny about it, on a journey that starts as spite and ends somewhere gentler.

But Schmidt is prickly and self-pitying in ways Alvin never is — more comic irritation than serenity.

About Schmidt poster

The Old Man & the Gun2018

Robert Redford's last screen role, playing a career bank robber who is, somehow, one of the most charming men alive. It shares Alvin's unhurried faith in decency, just pointed at crime.

But Breezier and more of a caper than a meditation — less interested in silence than Alvin's story is.

The Old Man & the Gun poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Straight Story

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Shootist1976

Both films are, unusually, dying men's stories told through dying (or nearly dying) actors — Farnsworth was terminally ill during Straight Story's shoot, much as Wayne was during his. Both trade Alvin's or Wayne's real screen legend for quiet, unsentimental confrontations with mortality rather than melodrama.

John Wayne's actual last film, playing an aging gunfighter dying of cancer who wants to choose the manner of his own end — shot while Wayne himself was ill. Same unsentimental dignity, aimed at death instead of reconciliation.

But It's a Western, with the genre's violence built in — nothing here is as peaceable as a lawnmower.

The Shootist poster
More like this (8)

The World's Fastest Indian2005

A real New Zealander in his sixties builds a motorcycle in his shed and rides it to Utah to break a land-speed record. Same stubborn old-man logic, same trust in strangers along the way.

But More triumphant and crowd-pleasing than Lynch's film — it wants you cheering, not sitting quietly.

The World's Fastest Indian poster

Harry and Tonto1974

An elderly widower and his cat cross America after being evicted from his New York apartment, meeting the country one small kindness at a time. Art Carney won an Oscar for it.

But Looser and more picaresque — episodes rather than a single destination, so it drifts more than it drives.

Harry and Tonto poster

Driving Miss Daisy1989

A slow, decades-long friendship built on patience and small daily proof rather than declarations — the same faith that goodness accumulates quietly, given time.

But It's a two-hander in close quarters rather than a journey through open country; more porch than highway.

Driving Miss Daisy poster

Lars and the Real Girl2007

A small Midwestern town closes ranks around a man everyone privately thinks is strange, and treats him with total, straight-faced kindness anyway. The same unembarrassed decency runs through both films.

But Its central conceit is odd on paper and takes a scene or two of goodwill to accept.

Lars and the Real Girl poster

A River Runs Through It1992

Robert Redford's elegy for two brothers and the Montana river between them, told with the same reverence for landscape and quiet regret over family bonds left too long unattended.

But More narrated and nostalgic, and its sadness sits with what's lost rather than what's repaired.

A River Runs Through It poster

Sling Blade1996

Billy Bob Thornton's gentle, damaged ex-convict finds unlikely welcome in a small town, and the film shares Alvin's patience with people others write off too quickly.

But Darker undercurrents and a heavier past than anything in Alvin's story — this one doesn't stay gentle.

Sling Blade poster

Make Way for Tomorrow1937

Both refuse to sentimentalize old age or supply a villain to blame; both simply let the ordinary indignities and quiet dignities of being elderly and inconvenient play out onscreen, asking what a family actually owes its elders.

An elderly couple, broke and unwanted, are separated and shuffled between children who love them but have no room for them. Orson Welles called it the saddest film ever made — no melodrama, just quiet, accumulating loss.

But It offers none of Alvin's redemptive ending — this one doesn't forgive anybody, and it will sit with you.

Make Way for Tomorrow poster

Sherman's March1986

Both are journeys where the stated purpose gets quietly sidelined by the people met along the way; both are really about what a solitary trip through America reveals about mortality and connection, disguised as something more modest.

A documentary that sets out to retrace Sherman's Civil War march and instead becomes a rambling, funny, unexpectedly moving meditation on love, loneliness and nuclear anxiety, one stranger's porch at a time.

But Much stranger and more self-aware than Alvin's story — first-person, digressive, occasionally very funny in a way that undercuts the reverence.

Sherman's March poster

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