Try asking someone at random , what life means to him? He
would probably say, in short, a struggle. The struggle could be to make his ends
meet. Or to come to terms with its
vicissitudes and imposing realities. Call someone else and pose the same
question. He might reply , life is trust. Trust in someone or something. Trust
that things will start working for him or trust that he will get better to
brave problems. But I believe, that there is another word that shall subsume all
the aforementioned propositions about life. Journey. Is there anything else that a ‘journey’ cannot encompass in its
broad meaning or anything that a journey cannot teach man?
David Lynch , as many might have known, is an American
film-maker who is known for his surrealist movies. For the only time in his
career , in 1999, he was hired by Walt Disney studios to merely ‘direct’ an
already completed script based on a quirky old man , whose resoluteness
transcended human understanding . It was about a man who was able to cross 310
miles of his country to reunite with his estranged old brother, with the help
of a, lawn mower. The movie was ‘The Straight Story’ starring a 79 year old part-time
actor Richard Farnsworth. The movie speaks not only about man’s doggedness in
the face of adversity but also about another unmistakable fact. The intangible
potential that a journey possesses to transform man even after age has rendered
him impenetrable to learning and insensitive to experience.
David Lynch seems to have taken the time tested route taught
by the Japanese film maker Yasujiro Ozu, who was the master when it came to
handling lives of aged people in movies. The film is laden with Ozu’s pillow
shots of magnificent landscapes embedding vast farmlands and thin roads that
pierce through their interminable length and breadth. Even the old man’s conversations that border on
moralizing ,those that recount both the happy
and doleful experiences of youth and the diverse yet benevolent characters that
help him accomplish his challenging journey, all remind of Ozu’s memorable fables.
The old man has sinned , in his youth , against his brother
and has been separated for a long time .The old man has only one aim , in his
last few years of his life- to meet his invalid brother after ten long years
and relive his childhood with him. The journey spans a horrendous five weeks in
all to complete. There are occasions when people whom he meets, offer to take
the burden of transporting him safely to his destination. The old man declines
each time with different , totally untrue reasons. But the fact is ,that he
feels that it is his burden, his ‘cross’ and his alone. He probably assumes that the carrying of his
burden shall relieve him of his any past sins or of any hauntingly distressful memories
he may have had with his brother. He deeply
wishes that when he meets his brother , he must be a clean man, a man who is as
guileless as a child, as he was probably once.
It is in a sense, a return to his childhood. A virtual time travel. The
journey , he believes, is a catharsis.
The film , no doubt relies on the masterful act of Richard
Farnsworth , whose sunken eyes and overgrown beard adds to the melancholy that
shrouds the life of Alvyn Straight.
The film has plenty of metaphors which are easy to
recognize. Alvyn’s route in the long
highway is always on the margin of the road that probably denotes the place ,
we have assigned to our seniors in our ever impatient society. The mini-chamber and the baggage which Alvyn
carries behind, denotes his past that continues to influence , undermine and
dictate the progress towards his future. However the most striking of Lynch’s
symbols is the accompaniment of the Divine, signified by the pillow shots which
keep hovering over the old man throughout his solitary sojourn,
overseeing him , shepherding him with help
and succor whenever needed and taking him to his destination with safety, finally ,vanishing into the
stars.
Lynch tempers the poignance of the mood with very fine
sprinklings of ironical humor during the course of the journey. The old man
witnesses a car in front of him colliding against a crossing stag ultimately
killing it. The motorist gets out of the car and begins to bewail her ill-fated
daily trips to work that had been killing plenty of similar stags over the last
few weeks. The scene beautifully segues into the old man appropriating the unclaimed
stag for his dinner purpose, only to find that he is surrounded by many more
stags staring at his ‘ruthless’ act with helpless indignation. The pre-climactic sequence is also special
where , the old man finds his motor going dead suddenly , leading him to brood
over the unexpected predicament . We
begin to anticipate the old man , deciding to cover the rest of the distance by
walk, but soon , he takes the advice of a passing tractor-man , to try restarting
his engine. He tries once and the engine comes alive to our surprise.
Absurdity!!
The Straight Story is one of David Lynch’s lesser known
works. Lynch infuses so much poetry into the narrative as much as he
impregnates with strong messages , all the more reason to consider the movie as
a very important work in modern American cinema.
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