Most people who subscribe to Disney+ do so because they know about the major properties that you can stream there. Disney+ has Star Wars and Marvel and all the animated classics that we know and love. While those titles are what brought many people in the door, they’re not the only things available on the streaming service.
In fact, Disney+ is home to great movies of all kinds, and this month, we recommend you check out The Straight Story from 1999. The film follows an elderly man who has no other feasible mode of transportation, and so decides to ride his lawnmower 1,000 miles to see his sick brother. Here are three reasons the movie is worth checking out.
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It has an amazing central performance
While the premise of The Straight Story may sound absurd (and it undeniably is), it’s anchored by a career-best performance from Richard Farnsworth. As Alvin, a working-class farmer who takes everyone he meets at face value. As we learn over the course of the film, though, Alvin is hiding some fairly severe trauma.
Even this reveal is underplayed, though, a reminder that Alvin has never seen his own pain as anything special. Farnsworth plays this moment and every other in the film beautifully. Alvin is a kind, simple man, but this performance manages to make him endlessly watchable.
It’s a reminder of David Lynch’s mastery
As its name might indicate, The Straight Story is among the most straightforward movies of David Lynch’s career. Gone are many of the surreal elements that are crucial to his style, and at least some of the darkness that usually defines his films. Instead, The Straight Story is intentionally mostly about what you see on the surface.
With Alvin and his daughter (played by a brilliant Sissy Spacek), there’s no real need for veneers. In spite of the movie’s straightforward approach, though, one of the more remarkable things about it is that it is nonetheless a David Lynch movie about how impossible it is to ever communicate the depth of what it is to be alive.
It winds up feeling deeply moving
Although the storytelling in The Straight Story is fairly simple, the movie nonetheless communicates plenty of beautiful ideas. Among those ideas is a simple one — a belief that underneath it all, people can be kind to one another.
Alvin runs into plenty of people on his journey, and the vast majority of them are kind and decent, searching for their own kind of peace in a world that’s often unfair to them. The Straight Story may seem like something small or minor, but as you watch it, you’ll realize that it’s a masterpiece in its own quiet, introspective way.
The Straight Story is streaming on Disney+.
