Historical Markers of the Modern Soundtrack

7	The Straight Story	2001 – David Lynch (USA)
	Aging & psychoacoustics	David Lynch & Angelo Badalamenti collaborations; rumbles, sub-sonic swells & distended reverb; digital silence and deafness; muzak

The Straight Story foregrounds aging as a process of the present rather than a portrait of the past. Appropriately, Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) has aged in the back story of the film, and now engages in forward action (literally, driving forth on a tractor) in a cathartic attempt to deal with his aging by achieving closure through speaking to his brother Lyle (cameoed by Harry Dean Stanton).

The dramatic graft which forges momentum in the film's story is the silence which hangs over the Straight brothers like an unfinished sentence. Non-speech and unfinished-speech are thematically mapped across many characters of The Straight Story. Rose (Sissy Spacek) is traumatized by the forced separation of her children due to her own psychological instability. Her speech patterns carry the scar of this wrenching, leaving her to speak grammatically correct sentences but in a timing which forces the flow of meaning through spurted phrases. Like Alvin, her voice is her story - not through words as written into her, but as words sounded through her. These fractured voices are contrasted against the warm blanketed tones which flow forth from the friendly family with whom Alvin stays while his tractor is being repaired en route.

While there are many passages of the film wherein one experiences abject silence, The Straight Story also exploits the digital soundtrack's capacity to move accurately between aural extremes. The mix of the film noticeably does not stay at a median of acceptable audio presence. In numerous moments one is urged to listen carefully - not because of distractions, simultaneous events or sonic density, but simply because one is at a remove from spoken action. Alvin is often presented chatting with others in one unedited shot. We hear long, insignificant conversation at a very low level, filmed from a great distance. One manages to understand words, but at a severely reduced auditory level. The Straight Story provides the sonic suit within which we can experience this deafness that accompanies old age.

Imbedded in these arranged silences, one sometimes hears a breathy, textural hum. It sounds like a long-ringing reverberant patina of parts of the film's lyrical score. Yet due to the rich, fixed tonality of these harmonic sheets of soft pink noise, a discernible base key works contra-harmonically to the score's apparently whimsical cues. These tones repeatedly well up to forecast the possibility that Alvin's brother may have already died. Like an emotional tinitis, this ringing is subtle but persuasive. It is the sound of the past: lingering, lilting, longing. Alvin feels that ringing, and travels across three states not merely to reunite with his blood brother, but to hear his own voice in their shared acoustic space. It is fitting that his brother is wordless at their reunion. The silence that lolls between them at the film's finish is the end to a disturbing hum which rang ceaselessly across time and space, until physical proximity could set it to rest.

From the BFI book 100 Modern Soundtracks.

See also THE STRAIGHT STORY - Olden Silence.