Paris, Texas

 

Last night we watched Paris, Texas. The film was incredible. So much so that when I went to sleep, I dreamt of it. It had penetrated my dreaming psyche. Clearly my mind had not wished to release itself from the world conjured by director Wim Wenders. Not just Wim Wenders, but also Ry Cooder and Robby Müller, who created the score and cinematography, receptively. I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie that integrated these three aspects so beautifully. The color, the camerawork and the music blend together so seamlessly as to create a unified piece of art. Each play an integral part and to remove or change any aspect of either of these three elements would damage the whole. All of this is to say nothing of the acting, which is something to behold in its own right. Harry Dean Stanton spends the first third of the movie as a mute, yet even without speaking his power as a performer is on display as he communicates complicated painful expressions of trauma, alienation, disorientation. The viewer wonders what's happened to the character while he's been missing for four years, but for most of the film we get no satisfactory answer. The backdrop of the film takes place in a gorgeously selected set of scenes ranging from Big Bend national park, to nowhere towns across Texas, only briefly showing slices of Los Angeles and Houston as the two major cities of the film. We see stunning desolate highways and barren deserts that evoke a modern spaghetti western. Our protagonist rides in old cars and trucks instead of on horseback, but the minimalist slide guitar summons something of The Good The Bad And The Ugly. 

Scenes are framed perfectly, each one almost a photo on its own. The camera moves with a deft and grace seen in few films. By using specific color palettes and lighting effects, playing with light and shadow, an oddly nostalgic and even noir atmosphere is created. There is a heavy use of silence in the film as a sort of negative space. It lends an odd air to the movie where scenes can really take their time and breathe. Some of the long takes, notably the scene near the end of the film where Travis and Jane speak to one another through a one-way mirror, is the stuff of movie legend. One gets the feeling immediately of the power of the actors and direction and writing. The deliberate and symbolic use of the mirror, the positioning of the characters so that we as the audience see both actors' faces at the same time creates an odd contrast to the typical cutting back and forth we're accustomed to during traditional dialogue-driven denouements. The scenes with Travis and his son are easily stolen by child actor Hunter Carson who is able to convey not just that kind of candid truth-telling only children possess, but also the spontaneity, innocence and authenticity. Those scenes are real marvels.

Nastassja Kinski's acting, even though she graces the screen mostly at the end of the film, is remarkable. Not only is it memorable, flawless and entrancing, it's raw and real and humanizing. I can think of few actors or actresses today who would be able to relay the same series of emotions and realizations in the way she does here. Just a masterclass performance.

The themes of the film, loss (of love, self, past and future, place and time), failure, pain, of searching, of being adrift, of trying to make a wrong right, are explored with an expert hand. We are never told how to feel. Which side do we fall on as we watch Travis take his son to find his mother? Are we to ignore the pain of his brother and his brother's wife who had raised Hunter as their own for the last four years while Travis was gone? What about Jane, who abandoned her child only to become a sex worker? What sort of future will Jane and Hunter have if Travis drives off into the limitless expanse of a neon-lit night? After reading a few reviews about the film, I haven't seen anyone touch on the theme of community, the importance of family and of kindness. This theme is an important one though it is perhaps less overt. Consider for a moment how the whole movie comes to a screeching halt if Travis' brother Walt, played by a great Dean Stockwell, walked away when Travis repeatedly refuses his help at the start of the film. "I'm just tryin' to help you, Trav. That's all," he tells his brother, in an effort to get him off the train tracks and into the car. And what would have happened to Hunter if Walter and Anne hadn't taken him in? Would he be rotting all alone in some foster home somewhere? Even Travis' motivation to get his son reunited with his mother is a gesture of togetherness and kindness, one which Travis doesn't even care to include himself in.

There's a scene after Walt finally manages to get Travis back home. He invites him in with kindness, makes him a bed, gives him the clothes off of his back, feeds him, and encourages him to explore the relationship with the son he abandoned. As part of ploy to help him remember, to get him back on the path of reclaiming his former life and identity, he sits everyone down to watch an old Super 8 recording of a family vacation they'd all taken together, back when Hunter was three. This scene is wonderful. The way the camerawork and music and acting come together to show complex emotions signaled by the nervous hand-wringing of a darkly silhouetted Stanton, or the curious boyish gaze of young Hunter Carson as he starts opening up to the idea of this stranger being his father - all of it happens as we watch a charming, well-manicured set of memories this family shared during better, happier times. This moment of the movie leverages a wistful, dreamy nostalgia that's at the same time beautiful and sad, easy and challenging, like so much of life.