Hollywood Utopia

124 Hollywood Utopia
Coda: The Straight Story (2000)
William Cronon suggests that there is a range of narrative questions ecological
historians should address, including:
-What do people care most about in the world they inhabit?
-How do they use and assign meaning to the world?
-How does the earth respond to their actions and desires?
-What sort of communities do people, plants and animals create together?
-How do people struggle with each other for control of the earth, its creatures
and its meanings?
And on a grander scale B
-What is the mutual fate of humanity and the earth?
(Cronon 1992: 58).
Such grand, all-inclusive questions are addressed in varying degrees in the films
discussed in this chapter and throughout the book but are most allegorically
encapsulated in this evocatively simple road movie which concludes this chapter. In
particular, the film draws upon America’s national physical beauty alongside the
magnetic appeal of movement through the landscape. More time/space is given
over to ‘pure’ nature in The Straight Story than is allowed in most Hollywood film;
furthermore, it is evocatively foregrounded rather than contained within the
background. Throughout the film’s relatively short journey the camera frames the
central protagonist within the rich agrarian corn belt, coalescing the visual
aesthetic of a western and a road movie.
The director, David Lynch as auteur, is more usually associated with surreal, quirky
tales from the cult Eraserhead (1976) to the TV phenomenon Twin Peaks (1989).
Yet he became fascinated by this true story of an elderly man who needs to make
peace with his brother after many years of separation. To achieve his quest, Alvin
Straight (Richard Farnworth) insists on carrying out his ‘pilgrimage’ on a
miniature 1966 John Deere tractor because his eyesight is so poor he cannot drive
a conventional automobile. Unlike the other protagonists addressed in this and
other chapters, Alvin has already learned to appreciate the power of ‘nature’ and his
own symbiotic (but not insignificant) place in the cosmos. His real power as an
agent of transformation is his ability to radiate a (mature) form of humility
alongside human stubbornness on his journey of discovery. The narrative journey
constantly privileges the changing moods of landscape and skyscape as captured by
the evocative cinematography of Freddy Francis and the music of Angelo
Badalamenti. 35