In 1984 a German filmmaker and an award-winning U.S. playwright collaborated on what would become maybe the quintessential American road movie. And honestly outside of perhaps Thelma and Louise, it’s not particularly close. That was Paris, Texas, an idiosyncratic drama about a man with apparent amnesia searching for his missing family –written by Sam Shepard and directed by New German stalwart Wim Wenders. It went on to win the Palme d’Or.
I’ve long been looking to watch this one, Wenders’ narrative film precursor to his masterpiece Wings of Desire, and road film precursor to his sprawling epic Until the End of the World. It occupies such a curious space in the revered film canon –a major work from an international auteur that is essentially an outsider’s perspective on the United States, a movie with all the bona fides of an indie classic but put forth with a tangible budget by a major studio, and starring in its’ lead role the furthest thing from a movie star, a character actor by the name of Harry Dean Stanton –at that point probably best known for being the second-killed-off guy in Alien.
There’s something so exciting and radical to each of these. That the movie can feel so vast, look so rich in spite of its’ humble qualities. Wenders shoots Texas with an exhilaration for its’ open atmosphere, its’ empty desert landscapes so foreign to the topography he knows from Europe. The movie was shot very close to where it takes place in barren patches of west Texas and Wenders seems to have a romance about it comparable to John Ford. But where Ford delighted in capturing the stately grandeur of the region (and oftentimes not the actual region), Wenders is drawn to the relics of civilization: grid roads and train tracks (and in L.A., intertwining bridges), solitary billboards with faded colours, small huts and ghost towns, and the image of a man in shabby clothes and a red ball cap wandering aimlessly against a harsh endless nature.
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I genuinely wondered whether Stanton’s Travis Henderson would remain mute for the entire film. He does plenty of great acting before saying a word, conveying an air of mystery and immense untold sadness in his simple expressions and body language. But fortunately he does eventually speak, as it’s through his voice that the movies’ most powerful scene is eventually carried. Stanton makes the most of this rare opportunity, one that the fifty-eight-year-old actor had been waiting for for years. Travis is a perfect lost soul, evoking the gentle sympathy of the forlorn itinerant, but with a silent determination as inspiring as it is eccentric. He comes into his own more confidently over the course of the movie, though still with a naïve, suppressive mindset -in some way an ideal avatar for the American that both Wenders and Shepard envision. And for an actor known for being a “that guy” type, showing up in over a hundred films in usually minor roles without much dimension, Stanton is rather unexpectedly the only man for the part.
The movie shuffles Travis around for a bit: he is first picked up by his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell), who hasn’t heard from him in four years since Travis’ wife disappeared, in which time he and his wife Anne (Aurore Clément) have been raising Travis’ now seven-year-old son Hunter (Hunter Carson) in Los Angeles. Travis and Walt travel for a while, eventually out to California where he spends some downtime reconnecting, before he goes off again to find his wife Jane (Natassja Kinski), this time with Hunter in tow. That direction comes only gradually, and it’s up to the audience to determine how much really is Travis slowly regaining his sense of self after so long in fugue. The journey takes interesting little detours -at one point Travis leads Walt down a grid road to the middle of nowhere. At another point he declares his intent to go to Paris, Texas -a real place- where he thinks he was conceived. The movie doesn’t follow this trajectory, and indeed the recuperation period, for as unexpected as it is, is vital in determining a sense of purpose. There’s also a healthy degree of warm sentiment there as when he’s watching the home movie of the family together. A mini-drama happens alongside this of Hunter coming to trust him.
Eventually though the plot reaches Houston, where Jane works at a peep-show, and while you expect something scandalous as a result of this, it’s not to be found. Travis and Jane’s reconnection through a phone and a one-way window, never meeting face to face, is impeccably beautiful; Shepard’s script never more soulful than when Travis, whose voice Jane doesn’t immediately recognize, recounts their romance in third person -a romance that descended into depression and abuse and immense sorrow. Through it, Kinski, illuminated by the Lynchian sharp reds of the room around her, gives just as moving a silent performance. It is the heart of the movie, the opening up of this traumatizing sadness both had locked away. And it makes the ending reunion between Jane and Hunter, with Travis excluding himself from their life, so impactful.
It’s the same kind of stirring poignancy Wenders later brought to Wings of Desire, and it’s no wonder his profile rose even back in Europe with this film. It’s a movie that has a unique spellbinding power in the way it presents both its’ lead character and his environment as entrancing enigmas. Much like its’ title: Paris, Texas -an alluring contradiction you can’t help but be drawn by.
Criterion Recommendation: The French Dispatch (2021)
This one is going to happen. It’s happened for all of Wes Anderson’s movies, for if no other reason than to keep his brother Eric employed designing covers for Criterion editions. This is more just a reminder to release it soon; The French Dispatch is after all one of Anderson’s best movies. An anthology, its’ stories are the highlights reel of a shuttering French bureau of the Kansas Evening Sun, dealing in topics of art, politics, and fine dining -each story as delightfully absurd, creative, and in a small way as bittersweet as any feature-length Wes Anderson film. With his standard terrific ensemble cast performing as a slew of captivating eccentrics, his aesthetic is developed and refined to new modes of picturesque beauty, especially in how the frame is transformed and in the precise use of colour in an often black and white film. It is a love letter to journalism and print magazines (specifically the New Yorker), a love letter to France and the French New Wave, and even arguably to the value of art itself. The kind of stuff that Criterion eats up -especially in such a quality film as this!
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