When Alvin Straight (Farnsworth) hears of his estranged brother's brush with death, he fires up his vintage John Deere lawn mower to make the slow trek from Iowa to Wisconsin in hopes of making peace before it's too late. Beset with his own health problems and unable to drive a car, Straight overcomes the practical setbacks that come from a long-distance road trip with the help and commiseration of the characters he meets along the way. Based on a true story, Lynch's crowd-pleasing odyssey earned Farnsworth an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and showed the world that, as Janet Maslin of The New York Times wrote, "When a born unnaturalist like Lynch can bring such interest and emotion to one man's simple story, the realm of the ordinary starts looking like a new frontier."
Presented as part of our ongoing Rewind '99 series!
"A beautiful, appropriately loping little gem about growing older, daring to take risks and follow your heart" -Philadelphia Inquirer
"Lynch takes us on a journey of shattering understatement -- a remarkable accomplishment." -Rolling Stone
"One of the tenderest, most plangent spiritual odysseys ever filmed" -Howard Hampton, Artforum