Dir David Lynch ~ starring Sissy Spacek; Richard Farnsworth, Harry Dean Stanton, James Cada, Jennifer Edwards

The movie isn’t just about old Alvin Straight’s odyssey through the sleepy towns and rural districts of the Midwest, but about the people he finds to listen and care for him. You’d think it was a fantasy, this kindness to strangers, if the movie weren’t based on a true story.

For a notion of just how far removed most American movies are from actual experience, consider the startling effect that Farnsworth has on screen. This actor, rancher and former stuntman, enough of a film veteran to have driven a chariot in The Ten Commandments , cuts a startling figure as an unabashedly old man. Unshaven, infirm, scraggly-haired and without makeup, he automatically frees the film from any sense of artifice and delivers an amazingly stalwart performance that will not soon be forgotten.