Paris, Texas

Sometimes something happens with a person in your life that is absolutely devastating, your world is completely flattened and you're left adrift, wandering spiritually and unable to relate to anyone else. The desolation of the scenery in this film, the poor run-down towns in Texas, and the wide openness of the landscape as the little car drives through it mirrors this feeling of being lost after such an event. This is a film that wields a heavy emotional hammer, and it left me with a hollow feeling in my chest.

The pace is slow but it matches the weight of this guy's past, and builds to an extraordinary scene, as he and his old lover communicate with the benefit of time having passed and through a mirror, saying the words which usually end up being unsaid, and coming to a kind of peace. There are scars which never completely heal but somehow we move on, and this film is a catharsis. There are so many other things to love about it too - Wim Wender's use of light and color, Ry Cooder's lonesome slide guitar, and Harry Dean Stanton's sense of what it is to be broken. It's a masterful, haunting work, one that will stick with you.

Greetings again from the darkness. It's been 30 years. The movie hasn't changed. I remember every scene. So that means it's ME that has changed. While I really liked the movie on its 1984 release, it's only now that I truly appreciate the brilliance of the script, the music, the direction, the photography and the acting … much less the wide range of emotions.

Director Wim Wenders has long been a favorite at Cannes Film Festival, and this one took home the prestigious Palme d'Or. Since then, the film has often been mentioned as one of the best movies of the 1980's, and after this most recent screening (courtesy of the Dallas Film Society), I wholeheartedly concur.

Opening in a most unusual manner … the lead character comes stumbling out of the Texas dessert and doesn't utter a word for the first 20-25 minutes … this film immediately strikes you as something unique – definitely not cookie cutter. Trying to outguess the script is a waste of time. It's best to just watch it unfold in a believable and sometimes awkward way.

In a rare lead role, long time character actor Harry Dean Stanton plays Travis. We soon enough learn that Travis disappeared four years ago leaving behind a wife and young son. We also learn that his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) and Walt's wife Anne (Aurore Clement) have been taking care of the boy, and Hunter (Hunter Carson) considers them his parents (his mom ran off too).

Walt and Anne invite Travis to stay with them and re-connect with his son, but they are caught off guard when the two really click and they take off to find Jane, the wife/mother. Their charming (but less-than-professional) stakeout leads to the discovery that Jane is working in a sex shop, spending her days talking to a 2 way mirror with lonely men she can't see. One of the most remarkable on screen soliloquies ever seen occurs on Travis' second trip to see Jane (Natassja Kinski). It's a heartfelt story that plays out as an explanation, an apology, and a plan for moving forward. It's his way of making reparations and finally doing the right thing (as he sees it).

As with most classic films, the backstory offers some interesting tidbits and the players are fun to catch up with. This story was originally written by the great Sam Shepard. Mr. Shepard is a Pulitzer Prize winner, an award winning playwright, and well known actor (Oscar nominated for playing Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff). Director Wenders then brought in L.M. "Kit" Carson to add and revise the script while on set. Carson's son (with actress Karen Black) Hunter plays the boy in the film, and he delivers one of the best, least affected, child performances of all time. Kit went on to write the screenplay for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) and had a significant acting role in Running on Empty (1988). His son Hunter is still a working actor today. Mr. Wenders was one of the German New Wave of directors along with Herzog and Fassbinder, and his Wings of Desire (1987) would make a terrific double feature with this one. Mr. Stockwell was a very successful child actor in the 1940's and is best known for his work in Blue Velvet and TV's Quantum Leap. Ms. Kinski is the daughter of Klaus Kinski and is fondly remembered for her roles in Tess (1979) and Cat People (1982), though she still works today as well.

Harry Dean Stanton is now 88 years old. He served in WWII and was present during the Battle of Okinawa. His acting career began in the 1950's and he still works periodically today. In addition to nearly 200 acting credits, he has had a pretty nice career as a musician. His band built a large cult following. Some of his most popular acting roles have been in Cool Hand Luke, The Godfather II, Alien, Repo Man, Escape From New York and Pretty in Pink.

The music in the film is provided by Ry Cooder, who is a tremendous slide guitarist and has worked with some of the all-time greats in the music business – The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison and Neil Young, among others. Cooder is a multi-Grammy winner and re-teamed with Wenders for the Oscar nominated Buena Vista Social Club a few years later. The music is an exceptional compliment to the movie, as is the camera work of Robby Muller, who also works frequently with Wenders.

This story of loss and loneliness is an easy one to overlook, but when a film holds up well for 30 years … and affects you differently depending on your own lot in life … its legacy is secure.

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.

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.

I first saw this film almost fifteen years ago and thought about almost nothing else for at least a month. I have never seen a film before or since that presents the extremes of love, pain, and loss with such immediacy and ruthless candor. Watching this film with openness, identifying with the characters, made me wince and writhe in sympathetic agony. I didn't cry; rather, I was reminded of all the times I have wept in my life, and why.

Perhaps each person person has a film -- usually a masterpiece -- which affects him or her so strongly that it is beyond description. This is mine.