TWO SHOWINGS ONLY • SUNDAY JUNE 15

David Lynch’s THE STRAIGHT STORY is famous for being the strangest footnote in a filmography defined by its strangeness: nestled in between the Cali noir of LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DRIVE is a gentle, ruminative Midwestern road picture about an old man and his tractor, rated G and distributed by the Walt Disney Company. Join us on Father’s Day (June 15) as our yearlong Lynch tribute arrives at the only picture of his we’ve never shown before, and the only one in which he dares to present his art unguarded by violence, aesthetic distance or dream logic. It’s the one time he played it Straight, and we won’t be surprised if it’s the most revelatory rewatch on the list.

A retired farmer and widower in his 70s, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) learns one day that his distant brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton) has suffered a stroke and may not recover. Alvin is determined to make things right with Lyle while he still can, but his brother lives in Wisconsin, while Alvin is stuck in Iowa with no car and no driver’s license. Then he hits on the idea of making the trip on his old lawnmower, thus beginning a picturesque and at times deeply spiritual odyssey.

“Sometimes a director’s best film and maybe even their most characteristic, if you really think about it, is the one you might least expect, as can be the surprising nature of auteurism.” – Chicago Reader