Paris, Texas
“Paris, Texas” is about bringing a man out of his shell, and putting him back together again. How he is put back together, however, is for us to find out, and the answer is a surprising one. I’ve heard a lot about Wim Wenders’s film over the years but tried not to read a lot about it. I find that’s probably the best way to experience Wenders- just let him open his film up to you, and see how you vibe with it. For the most part, I’ve found his work positively transfixing, and his 1984 drama is no different.
We begin with a man in a desert. He isn’t saying a word. He is looked at by a small town Texas doctor, but he doesn’t say a word. The doctor looks in his things, and finds a name, and contacts the man’s brother in Los Angeles. The patient is Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton), and his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), comes to pick him up. Still no words. It’s not until an aborted stay at a motel, wherein Travis leaves suddenly, that Travis finally begins to speak. It’s almost as though he needs to be reminded about his life. Walt tells him about Hunter (Hunter Carson), Travis’s son from his marriage with Jane (Nastassja Kinski), and how he’s living with Walt and his wife, Anne (Aurore Clément). Once they get back to LA, Travis spends time with Hunter, and wants to find out what happened to Jane. So do we.
Wenders is not a filmmaker who looks to tell straightforward stories. Even if they unfold in a fairly straightforward way, or fit into a specific genre (like his God-awful “The Million Dollar Hotel”), there’s something distinctive about his choices that makes them feel unique, and a little more profound. Travis is very clearly a broken man when we meet him, and when Walt picks him up, but this isn’t about putting his life back together the way he we think he wants it, but the way in which he is able to reconcile with his past for the sake of his future. When he takes Hunter on a road trip to Houston- the spot where several bank transactions from Jane into a bank account for Hunter originate from- we think it could be more than just finding out what happened to Jane, and reuniting the three of them. How it unfolds is not what we expect, however, and we see that he isn’t on a journey simply for reconciliation, but absolution and understanding. The ways in which characters connect in Wenders films is what gives them their power; how he doesn’t connect them in the ways we expect is why his greatest films are great.
The greatest performances in Wenders films are when we get a naturalistic view of humanity, even when the characters are not strictly human. The angels in “Wings of Desire,” the toilet cleaner in “Perfect Days,” and in “Paris, Texas,” the central performances. This was my first time watching the film, and these performances lived up to their reputations. It’s interesting that Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell are playing brothers in this film, because I’ll admit there are times I confuse them, not because they look the same but because they often occupy the same type of role for me, of gruff, sometimes intense individuals who are off to the sides of the action and drama, rather being central to it themselves. That made the first half of this film such a treat to watch, seeing them sometimes play into that archetype against one another, but ultimately subvert it as they work through the narrative Wenders and his writers, L.M. Kit Carson and Sam Shepard, have unfold. There’s a delicacy to each other’s gruffness in this film that I resonated with, and seeing how they each challenge the traditional ideas of masculinity is compelling. And yet, we see clearly how one (Walt) would be a positive role model for Hunter, while the other (Travis) ultimately is not. Travis and Hunter do form a connection which facilitates the road trip to find Jane, but it always feels like a tenuous one towards a common goal, not because they are becoming a healthier father-son tandem. That is made clear when we get to Houston, and they find Jane, and Travis goes to meet her without Hunter. The scenes with Jane, played by Kinski in a performance as revelatory as Stanton’s is, are the heart of the movie, where its secrets are laid bare, and we see how this family can never be put back together, but can at least heal together in a way that is best for them. The cinematography by Robby Müller and the score by Ry Cooder capture the sense of isolation these characters feel in all its stark, emotional beauty. By the end, we understand the title of the film. For Travis, Paris, Texas was a possible destination where his life could be put back together; what he comes to understand is that that goal needs to be about the individual, not the collective, which is sometimes best separated. This is a beautiful film where that truth is realised.
