Paris, Texas

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.

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.

"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.