Paris, Texas Reviews

I was born in 1984 and this is the best film that came out that year. The story is one which always bewilders my imagination. The protagonist will enrapture, the son-mother-father relationship will massage your senses. It's despairingly good!

    It’s one of those movie openings that immediately makes an impression: a man in an ill-fitting suit and red cap walking in the desert headed in a direction, he himself, is quite unsure of, holding half a bottle of water. Tired, with a desperation in his face that only means trouble ahead.

     He is Travis, whose once proud eyes turned humble and apologetic as he tries his best to reconnect with his abandoned son, a wife who abandoned him, and most especially, himself. Set in sun-drenched Texas, where everybody seemed to have left for the ocean, and those that remain have likely forgotten how to dream.

     Director Wim Wenders has captured the landscape Texas is known for: Rustic, dusty, all-American. To the tune of Ry Cooder’s blaring slide guitar, it almost felt like a Western movie of American consumerism, except it is not. “Paris, Texas” is a hauntingly beautiful personal drama of a wayward father whose personal suffering becomes his pillar of strength to overcome his grievances.

     Written by L.M. Kit Carson, Sam Shepherd and Wim Wenders, it stars Harry Dean Stanton in a stand-out performance. And 30 years since its release, Stanton never had another role that he is easily identified with, and celebrated in. In some way, it was also  co-star Nasstassja Kinski’s crowning achievement, though she only appeared halfway into the movie, there is no other Kinski role that could be listed nearly as artistic. Also starring Dean Stockwell, Hunter Carson and Aurore Clement.

     “Paris, Texas” won the Palm D’Or at Cannes. It is one of the best, important American movie of its era.

I think I had with this flick one of the best movie experiences in my whole life. Indeed, I must have been 15-16 years old the first I watched it and it completely blew me away. Back when it was released, it was a critical success and this movie won the prestigious Golden Palm at the Cannes film festival but nowadays it is a little bit forgotten but it's actually a real shame. Indeed, it has one of the best soundtrack ever and the story, the directing, the acting, everything was just plain amazing. Basically, it was just a really mesmerizing picture to watch. In my opinion, it is also a really poectic picture with a hypnotising slow tempo which could bother impatient viewers but it did work for me, absolutely. Since then, I have following Wim Wenders’s career and even though he has made many interesting features, no one of them really touched me like this one (even his following directing effort, ‘Der himmel über Berlin’, which is supposedly a masterpiece didn’t impress me that much). Anyway, to conclude, it is easily my favorite movie directed by Wim Wenders , it is plain and simply a great movie and it is definitely worth a look.