Paris, Texas

Paris Texas is a slow, moody, and delicate study about a man who once ran away from everything and now is coming to terms with himself and learning to forgive himself, by finally facing he people he turned his back on. The Wim Wenders directed movie still today rests in a fairly under recognized status, which doesn't stretch the term "cult classic" when applied to it. Paris, Texas is about redemption, the road, family, and the bleakness of the American Southwest. It contains one of the most memorable and unusual openings ever. We hear Ry Cooder's lonely single note twangy guitar on the soundtrack with cinematographer Robby Müller (Barfly, To Live and Die in L.A. , Dead Man) capturing the majestic vistas, rock formations, and the open desert in his camera. Actor Harry Dean Stanton walks out of the dry and desolate landscape, wearing a wornout black sports jacket and dusty red baseball cap. It's a beautifully staged opening sequence. A perfect start to a perfect movie. This man is lost and in need of being found. It's his brother played by actor Dean Stockwell ("Quantum Leap", Blue Velvet) who gets word of Stanton's whereabouts and goes after him, which begins the journey of redemption. Nastassja Kinski plays Stanton's young x-wife and the true love of his life. Kinski, the daughter of legendary German actor Klaus Kinski, doesn't make her entrance into the film until the later reels, but her lingering presence is felt throughout. It's almost the same type of thing that Coppola did by not having Brando appear in Apocalypse Now until the conclusion. The scenes that Kinski does have in the end with Stanton are some of the best moments ever captured on film. They're highly emotional and will cause even the most hard-hearted to shed a tear. Both Stanton and Kinski are very subtle and understated in their acting. It's true to their characters. Eight year old Hunter Carson plays Stanton's biological son, who was raised by his uncle (Stockwell). Carson certainly deserves mention in any conversation about great child performances on film. Paris, Texas is a masterpiece. There's no way around it. It's a movie that slowly reveals itself putting the audience right in the shoes of Stanton, who also is trying to remember his past and face it. The story was penned by playwright and actor Sam Shepard, though he doesn't appear in the film. Shepard, a very good playwright, has outdone himself with Paris, Texas surpassing his perhaps more well known, True West. Paris, Texas is a film that must not only be seen, but experienced. Sure the pacing is extremely slow, but as an audience member, use that to your advantage to suck in the picturesque orange southwest desert against the deep blue skys, and the poignant acting, and haunting soundtrack. There's no reason not to treat yourself to this uniquely American masterpiece meditation. It would make a great nightcap for a triple feature with two other simular themed American films, The Searchers and Taxi Driver.

"Paris, Texas" is by far one of the best films ever made. It's a well-photographed film; it's almost like a portrait. In the center you have the characters: Travis, Walt, Hunter, Jane, and Anne; and all around them you see the desert and the empty space and the places they inhabit. The major characters are all memorable, especially Harry Dean Stanton as Travis and Dean Stockwell as Walt.

The film is about reunion. The first third of the film, dealing with the reunion of brothers Travis and Walt in the Texas desert, is both very touching and very real. You can sense the frustration on Walt's face when Travis doesn't want to talk to him about anything, and throughout the road trip, you begin to get more interested in Travis' ramblings to Walt about Paris, Texas.

The second third deals with the reunion of Travis with his son, Hunter, and, to a lesser extent, since he's only been gone for less than a week, the reunion of Walt with his wife Anna and Hunter. This is by far my favorite part of the film, because it shows a young boy (Hunter) trying to readjust after his father returns after a four-year absence. Hunter (by the way, he's a great actor) is nice to Travis at first, but refuses to walk home from school with him because "Everyone drives." The fact that director Wim Wenders focuses on this little portion of the film shows true family life--it expands the little "sin" that Hunter has done. This event sets up perhaps my favorite scene in any film: Hunter and Travis walking home "together"--on opposite sides of the street--with the boy mimicking the movements of his real father. In the following scene I'm touched because the neighborhood reminds me of home--Hunter stops and allows his father to cross the street to join him. There is also a scene (also with no dialogue) that deserves mention--the family watching Super 8mm film of a family fishing trip. Here we see Jane for the first time (a beauty), and we get a portrait of the happy family while the film plays background music for us. It's a wonderful scene that's executed beautifully. The film of the fishing trip allows Hunter to make an observation to Anne about his father--he sees by the way Travis looked at Jane that Travis still loves her very much.

The last third of the film comes as a real shock, and I won't spoil it for anyone because this third of the film is what made me REALLY love the entire film. The sequence of events in the final third actually came out of left field, because I was never really expecting that. You should have figured out, though, that there is a reunion between Travis and his estranged wife, Jane. Harry Dean Stanton's monologue is perhaps one of the best ever caught on film. It's really long but you hear every word and every pause. And what I like about that particular scene is the lighting--notice how the sunlight comes in through the window in Jane's room, and suddenly near the end you realize that it's been artificial light after all. There is a similar lighting effect in "A Clockwork Orange"--during Alex's chat with F. Alexander and his two co-conspirators over wine and spaghetti.

Overall, "Paris, Texas" is a great film that should be noted both for its photography and for its realistic look at family life. These are people who are a real family--opinionated, angry, happy, sad, melodramatic, judgmental, high-strung, incommunicado, etc. They refuse sometimes to admit their true feelings and that is exactly what makes a family a family sometimes, the fact that you can't say what you really want to say at a certain time.

This is the kind of film directors really want to make--small, realistic, poignant...and with zero special effects.

At face value, the screen story, about a dysfunctional family, is weak. The plot is not really credible. The lead character (Travis) is an older man who in the first ten minutes of the film wonders alone in the desert like a horse with no name, seemingly suffering from severe trauma. But Travis' later behavior and the behavior of other characters in the film are not believable, given this opening gambit.

However, if we discard our need to interpret behavior rationally, then the film works, either as a dream or, more generically, as a parable of modern day America, from the viewpoint of a European film director. The characters and their journey through the film's story are symbolic of American culture as a whole, with its ever-present loneliness, urban alienation, emotional separation, and general rootlessness.

The film's visuals and music combine to prop up the thin story, and give the film its enduring cultural theme. Cinematographer Robby Muller's images are stunning. His location shots both in the desert and in the urban jungle, using polarizing filters, are works of true photographic art. The images, with their florescent greens, reds, blues, and yellows in dim light are just terrific. More than any dialogue could, these visuals effectively convey the loneliness, alienation, and lost love that are so characteristically American. And Ry Cooder's simple but haunting Tex-Mex guitar sounds amplify this grim mood.

The film's main flaw is its length. With a runtime of 150 minutes, some parts of the film could have been edited out, without loss of the film's message.

"Paris, Texas" is a memorable art house film about the modern American experience. Like other art house films, the story is not necessarily to be taken literally. Instead, the story provides narrative support for the visuals, the music, and other film elements, the combination of which imparts some broader or deeper social message than could be conveyed by story alone.

It's hard for me to select just one movie as my very favorite, but if I had to, "Paris, Texas" would probably be it.

As I recall, I first saw it while I was a student in a small theater in '84 or '85; a year or two later I recorded it from cable to Beta tape. After not having watched it for years, I've played it again a few times over the last couple of years. Many movies I recall having liked in the past are just big disappointments when I watch them years later. That's not the case with this one! Then I was single; now I'm married. That alone makes a big difference, but I also find that even some small elements now have more meaning. I previously attached no significance to the scene where Travis was determined to find the same rental car in which he and Walt had previously driven. But how often people do sentimentally and fiercely cling to, objectively, unimportant things in reaction to having had their hearts and spirits broken more than a few times over important things. I often recall this scene when observing some instance of this in myself or others.

I am struck by what opposite opinions people have of this movie. If you have few problems relating to other people, or you don't care much about relating to other humans, and little in your life disappoints you over long spells of your life, you will probably find this movie very boring. I sort of envy people in this situation, though before I would want to wish myself to be like that, I pause at how much my life would be changed and how little of my personality would be left, if I did.

I, too, eagerly await the release of this movie on high quality DVD, and hope that my still barely viewable Beta will last til then.

"Oh, Travis."

It might seem odd to call this an "American" film, as its director, Wim Wenders is a German film director, who , unlike his predecessors, Lang, Murnau, Pabst, Von Sternberg , and Billy Wilder, has chosen to remain aloof from the Hollywood film industry. But Paris Texas is as much an American film as Tocquevillle's "Democracy in America" is an American book. Sometimes it takes a foreigner ( In Wim Wenders' case, a foriegner who loves American music, American movies and American literature.) to look into the American soul. In this case,it helps that he is working with a great-and misunderstood- American writer, Sam Shephard, and a great-and under appreciated- American actor, Harry Dean Stanton. I can not begin to convey who poetic, how haunting, and how beautiful this film is, and how artfully it probes the American heart. The scene where Stanton confronts his wife, and tells what he did and why he did it, must rank among the supreme scenes, not just of film, but of human life. It echoed the great scenes of our literature, such as Ulysses meeting with Penelope, and the return of the prodigal son. In short, the only film which goes beyond it in the eighties is Raging Bull, and that is largely because of the volcanic power of Scorsese, that most self-crucifying of auteurs. in short, I would go so far as to say that Paris Texas is more than a "ten'...Like Citizen Kane, like 2001, like Andrei Roublev, like Raging Bull , like the Searchers, like Pickpocket, Tokyo Story, Seven Samurai and Ordet,it is an ELEVEN. Sublime AND beautiful.