Paris, Texas — Review
This film’s opening shot feels like an ending. The audiences meet the protagonist, Travis Henderson (played by the late Harry Dean Stanton), dusty, ragged, and defeated — standing in a desert. Paris, Texas demands patience from its viewers but the 2 hours and 30-minute investment is worth its return. The film is a treat to look at. The cinematography by Robby Müller is delicate and intentional with every object, character, or landscape presented on screen. The cinematography utilizes vibrant pastel colors — primarily red, white, and blue throughout the film — and wide-angle lenses that constantly enhances the presence of the actors. Paris, Texas does what great films are supposed to do and that is effortlessly combines sight and sound to tell a compelling story. The locations of the film are primarily empty and quiet spaces — gas stations, diners, and open highways. This quiet emptiness the cinematography captures is perfectly mirrored with the protagonist Travis, who doesn’t speak for most of the film’s beginning. Travis doesn’t speak until well after his brother Walt, who he hasn’t seen in four years, gets a call that somebody found him stumbling into an abandoned store. Walt brings Travis to his home where the plot begins to materialize. The audience becomes acquainted with Walt’s home, his wife Anne, and a boy named Hunter. Walt and Anne try to offer Travis some love but he remains rather quiet. Walt and Anne decide to project home videos in order to cheer him up.
Walt projects super-8 films onto a wall where viewers see Travis happily playing with a gorgeous woman (Nastassja Kinski) and a little boy (Hunter Carson). Travis, with this woman and boy, are performing typical family activates such as fishing, camping, and playing by the beach. It’s through this scene where the director, Wim Wenders, conveys so effectively one of the film’s biggest themes, lost. The scene connects the dots for why Travis has been so silent and makes up for the unrelenting silence the first half of the film has. The boy in the home movie is revealed to be, Hunter, Travis’s son who Walt has been raising while Travis was roaming the desert for years. Anne tells Travis that his estranged wife is still in contact with her Hunter and that she deposits money for him on a regular basis. At this moment, Travis gets the idea to reconnect with his wife next time she visits the bank.
With this destination in mind, the film becomes a subtle road movie, but the story is much more concerned with emotional exploration than physical endpoints. The rawest emotions shared between characters are frequently non-verbal. When choosing Harry Stanton to play Travis, Wenders said this about him, “We chose Harry Dean because he is one of the few adults I know who has kept the child that’s dead in most adults with him. He has an innocence about him”. That innocence certainly protrudes in the film, as the search for his wife never feels as if it’s for personal gain. Travis is not simply trying to win back a former lover, but he wants all three members of his family to be connected. Travis never presents himself as the stubborn loner who has esoteric demons that other characters would be incapable of understanding. He is highly aware of what saddens him sad and his presence on the screen allows other characters to safely reflect on the sadness in their lives as well. If Travis had to be assigned a quality that makes him heroic and stand above the other characters, it would be his vulnerability. Travis’s vulnerability, along with his tenderness drives him to think unselfishly on a journey to reunite his family.
This film is currently streaming on kanopy.com or can be purchased from The Criterion Collection
