Word: alvin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...what happens in Tumbleweeds; that's what doesn't happen in Anywhere but Here. If you follow the form charts, it should have been otherwise. The latter film has the big stars (Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman), the name creators (director Wayne Wang of The Joy Luck Club; writer Alvin Sargent, adapting the best-selling novel by Mona Simpson), a capacious budget. What it doesn't have is a central figure you can give a hoot about...
...other black candidates, Donald Harding and Alvin E. Thompson, ran and lost--perhaps in part due to the changing demographics of Cambridge, which is gaining more white residents...
...Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), hero of David Lynch's The Straight Story, brings out the best in people--by talking or listening to them or just by the example of his tortoise-like quest. He is driving his John Deere lawnmower 350 miles to see his estranged brother. Alvin turns out to be your basic Lynch hero: a Kyle Maclachlan type, as average as apple pie, who follows his obsessions to heaven or hell. The supporting cast is normal too--and thus vastly weird, because Lynch presents them, as he did the sickos of Blue Velvet, without comment or condescension...
...script by John Roach and Mary Sweeney. It keeps finding new ways to make rural decency dramatic. But the soul of the film is in Farnsworth's eyes--great watery repositories of wisdom and regret. "The worst part of bein' old," he says, "is rememberin' when you was young." Alvin's tragic memories give perspective to the triumph of his trek, even as Farnsworth's weathered brilliance makes this movie...
...always manages to show something unexpected, something fresh. But is this any less justified of an approach to filmmaking? Sure, we know what's going to happen, 15 minutes into the movie and this fact, coupled with our optimistic belief that happy endings still exist, leaves us confident that Alvin Straight will be reunited with his brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton), whether incarnate or in spirit. But if the film only promised us the potential for factual knowledge, could we sit through it? Not to be a complete moral relativist, but I wonder who'd really care what happened...