MINAGUA

As a double bill, it may seem like an unlikely pairing, but watching William Friedkin's nihilistic action thriller Sorcerer (1977) after David Lynch's sweet, human tale The Straight Story (1999) last week somehow made perfect sense to me.

Both films centre around impractical journeys involving vehicles—one following a lawnmower transporting an old man 240 miles from Iowa to Wisconsin, the other featuring large trucks carrying nitroglycerin across inhospitable terrain in a South American jungle.

Sorcerer and The Straight Story contrast two distinct perspectives on humanity. Lynch's film offers a hopeful view, depicting an old man making peace with his past and resolving his present, while Friedkin's presents a grim, inescapable journey of karmic inevitability, where criminals must face the consequences of their actions, no matter how far they flee. The emotions evoked by the two films couldn't be more different—the sweet, lucid pragmatism of Alvin Straight versus the entrapment and despair of Roy Scheider’s character, Jackie Scanlon. Both men undergo a trial of endurance and perseverance, but only one is rewarded with the gift of a happy ending. The other, no matter how much he has tried to atone for the sins of his past, must reckon with his miserable fate—trapped like a fly in a sticky web, unable to escape his destiny despite his journey through his own dark night of the soul.

For if Wisconsin represents the end of the road—or liberation—for Alvin, where he is finally reunited with his estranged brother, then Minagua represents an endless Samsaric hell realm for Jackie, a place from which one cannot escape when arrived at through negative actions.

This contrast between the two films is evident in their key bar scenes: Alvin enjoys a final light beer before reuniting with his brother, while Jackie—looking like a forgotten character from John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—nurses his drink with a drained expression, trapped in a place that is merely an extension of his tortured mind.

Minagua.