1983: Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1983) 9/10

With it’s opening aerial shots of the Mojave Desert, one would first expect Wim Wenders’ 1983 "road movie" Paris, Texas to be an elegiac homage to the American Western. Yet, out of the scorching landscape of the Mojave Desert there stumbles a man who is not a robust giant, but rather a skeletal figure: a mere shadow of his former self. Like John Wayne's character Ethan Edwards in John Ford's The Searchers, the man is a loner: out of touch with the modern world, yet trying to re-enter it without fully being able to comprehend the effect of such a decision.

Thus, we are witness to the first endeavor in four years undertaken by Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) to exit the wind-swept vast emptiness of the desert and re-enter the neon wilderness of contemporary American society. Desperate to quench his thirst, Travis collapses in a diminutive concrete bar on the outskirts of the Mojave and awakens only to find himself being scrutinized by an inquisitive German physician and his stringent green neon lights. Searching for the man’s identity, the physician comes across a business card in Travis’ wallet. Yet, Travis is unable to confirm whether the name on the card belongs to him, or a relative. He is currently in a self-imposed catatonic mute state: the result of a tragedy he is as of yet is unwilling to confer about.

After calling the number, the physician gets in contact with Travis’ brother Walt (Dean Stockwell): a Los Angeles based entrepreneur who designs billboards and lives in a modern home on the periphery of metropolitan LA. Stunned to hear of his brother’s existence Walt informs his French wife Anne (Aurore Clement) about the news. Her response is aphasic. While she is pleased to hear that her brother-in-law is alive, she is internally worried about the effect it will have on his soon to be 8 year old son Hunter (Hunter Carson) who she and her husband have adopted.

Upon arriving in Texas, Walt is appalled to find that his brother has snuck away from the physician’s office in order to continue his eternal search in the desert. When Walt catches up with Travis, he is given a cold response. Despite Walt’s efforts to re-immerse him into the fold, Travis eventually steals away again in his vain quest to return to the wilderness. Yet, once more Walt corrals his estranged brother and demands an answer to Travis’ behaviour. However like the static and muted television in their motel room, Walt receives nothing but silence and disorientation.

Travis continues to receive information, but fails to process the answers Walt needs and wants to hear. Soon, Travis’ perplexing behaviour turns obsessive-compulsive as he refuses to fly to LA and instead wants Walt to track down a particular rental car and take a two day trip back to southern California. Reluctantly, Walt agrees. Along the way, Travis begins to slowly open up. His character is a shy and childlike ball of turbulence. His internal conflicts produce a web of confused language and bizarre questions about his childhood.

In fact, as the film expands so does Travis’ interest in the past. Upon arriving at Walter’s home, he voraciously flips through photo albums and asks questions about his mother. Most befuddling of all he carries a picture of an empty plot of desert in Paris, Texas, which he purchased four years earlier to begin a new life for his family. According to a story told to Travis by his father, it was the land were Travis was initially conceived. While Walter believes his brother has fried his mind in the Mojave sun; in actuality Travis has begun a process of regeneration and rebirth; reverting to a childlike state and learning how to grow.

Upon his first distant meetings with his remote son, Travis appears appropriately nervous: preferring to spend time sitting on Walter’s hill-top patio with a pair of binoculars staring at the planes who fly over the house constantly throughout the day. The desert hills have been replaced with tight concrete monstrosities; while the whistling wind is usurped by a cacophony of whizzing planes, cars and sirens. Artificial lights pollute the sky in a blaze of simulated nature. Travis is perturbed by it all. He is desperately searching to return to something more organic and natural.

As he reaches a more mature stage of growth, he asks Walter’s housekeeper to help him become an ideal father. His son who previously rejected all advances to walk home with his father, now clings to his side, which worries Anne and Walt. The past becomes more resonant when Walter displays Super 8 footage from five years earlier in which Travis, Hunter and his abstracted wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) are blissfully enjoying life. The images unearth and solder the directionless fragments in Travis’ mind. Now, he has a purpose. After being informed by Anne that Jane is possibly residing in Houston, Travis gathers his son and belongs and attempts to recover the life he once he lost and mend the past once and for all.

Paris, Texas is less a "road movie" as some critics have described it and more an existential journey for self-knowledge, as well as a commentary on the emotional complexities of modern life. Travis is desperate to rehabilitate the family he once had and realizes he must undergo his own personal psychological and emotional amendment in order to do so. This involves facing the past and regenerating himself from a childlike state to an effective father. The process is made incredibly difficult not only because of the external difficulties between father and son, but also because of Travis’ reluctant and unassertive approach to solving problems.

When Travis’ is finally reunited with Jane his response is frigid and aggressive. He detests what she has become, but more so he detests what he has forced her to become due to his past actions. Wender’s lush long takes and the performances by Stanton and Kinski during these scenes are beautiful, yet difficult. Like Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, Wenders traps his audience by exercising the scenes between the estranged couple in gorgeous extended takes that demonstrate the multiple sides to the couple. Upon their first meeting Travis listens while Jane talks in a meaningless, watery tone. Yet, the tables are later turned with Jane tearfully listening, while Travis concocts a painful allegory in a striking contrast to Jane’s destitute speech. It is here that we see Travis realize the folly of his four years of pain and strife.

Earlier, Travis had drunkenly told Hunter about how his father began to love his mother not for who she was as a person, but as an idea. This scene is shot in a manner that almost appears like a psychologist’s office in which Travis pours out his troubles to his son who becomes his stand-in psychoanalyst. Yet, here we begin to see how the past continues to inflict great pain on Travis. Whereas at the beginning of the film, he remained a teetotal former alcoholic, he now readily drowns himself in alcohol to try to forget the past. As he drives his antiquated truck through decrepit towns with faded Coca-Cola signs and dim-lit bars, he knows he must accomplish this task in order to bring stability and meaning to the life of his son, if not to his own.

Robby Muller’s cinematography is truly gorgeous and along with Kaufman’s Unbearable Lightness of Being and Kurosawa’s Ran, Paris Texas is one of the best looking films of the decade. It is also enhanced by Wenders colour-coded symbolism that unlike the work in PT Anderson’s Punch Drunk Love never feels forced or artificial, but rather an organic extension of the work. In my analysis, the four major colours referenced the most overtly in the picture are black, red, green and yellow. Black stands in for truth and honesty. The couch on which Travis emits his darkest secrets to his son is black, as is the clothing he wears on his second visit with Jane.

Red stands for the past and pain. The dusty red cap Travis wears in the desert symbolizes his mental agony. The crane assisting in the delicate construction of claustrophobic, emotionless new buildings is red. Upon their first sighting of Jane, father and son are wearing red, while she drives a red Chevette. The room in which Travis and Jane first talk is completely red as is her clothing. Yellow stands for change. The cap wore by Dean Stockwell when he first learns that Travis is alive is yellow. The shirt wore by Hunter when he first accepts Travis is yellow. Green seems to be the most promising colour that of hope. The second to last scene in the film is bathed in green as is Travis’ meeting with the physician. Here there is promise for something new to be created and/or rehabilitated.

The modern problems of communication are also symbolized in the film. Travis is reluctant to use modern appliances such as phones, cars, planes or trains. His attempts to be honest and forthcoming often necessitate in turning his back to the person he is trying to address. At the beginning of the film, he is often mute or talks in ambigious fragments, which fail to capture his emotions to others. Furthermore, he is unable to sleep as he is tormented by an urge to end his search.

Brilliantly acted, beautifully shot, powerfully scripted by Sam Shepard and astutely directed Wim Wenders film is a slow-burning exploration into the psychological and emotional difficulties in contemporary Western society. Despite its slow pace, the film is never dull or trite. Rather the picture is a fascinating and complex, yet emotionally difficult examination of a man destroyed by modernity and searching to rebuild the past in order to better the future of his once cherished family.

Like L’Avventura and La Dolce Vita, the film successfully examines the spiritual emptiness of modern life. Travis is a figure desperate to love, yet has realized the life he has sought for almost half a decade was nothing more than an idealized memory. His wife and their relationship have become objectified, sterile and passive. Thus, like Ethan Edwards the home Travis returns to can no longer accept his kind. The road and the desert are his only salvation: the only environment in which the remainder of his desolate life can continue.

* Paris, Texas is available on R1 DVD through Fox Home Video

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.