Paris, Texas

UK Release Date. 23 August 1984
Certification. 15
Running Time. 2 hours 25 mins
Director. Wim Wenders
Cast. Aurore Clément, Nastassja Kinski, Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell.
Rating. 74%

Review.

After 40 years, Wim Wenders' iconic vision of American alienation still feels as mesmeric as ever. Enigmatic and utterly absorbing.

An apparently mute and weather-beaten drifter, with no recollection of his recent life, emerges from the West Texas Desert. The unforgettably gaunt Harry Dean Stanton is Travis Henderson. As Travis slowly begins to piece together the memories of the life he led, and the fact he walked out on his wife and child four years previously, he embarks on a journey to reunite his family. As Travis finally hones in on the tragedy of himself, having abducted his own child and located his estranged wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), the film emerges as a study of betrayal, grief and separation.

The heartbreaking climactic scenes at the peep show serve as a metaphor for Travis' and Jane's separation. The sordid loneliness and extreme alienation, coming after the more reassuring story of domestic comfort and father-and-son reconciliation, delivers the film's enduring impact.

Paris, Texas is a beautiful film. Beautiful to look at, but an even more beautiful-sounding film. Face-to-face conversations are nearly absent from the screen, frequently replaced by the elegiac twang of Ry Cooder's slide guitar, which seems to mimic the desolate beauty of the West Texas Desert.

 

Little time, or effort, is afforded to the standard rules of cinema. The plot is secondary to the imagery. But Wenders is not aimless, he is studying the listless nature of America, a shifting world where it seems impossible for humans to communicate meaningfully. 

Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is a road movie of rare integrity. Devoid of typical arthouse flourishes, the very Americaness of the landscape is made ethereal by Wenders' luminous camera. It is an eerie, haunting story whose meaning disappears over the limitless horizon as if on a highway heading off through the desert. 

Paris, Texas won the Palme d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. And after a career of self-effacing supporting roles, 58-year-old Harry Dean Stanton suddenly became an icon of arthouse cinema.

One of the great films about America. Directed by a German.