When I first considered writing about the 1984 film Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders, I decided not to because it was too disturbing for me. Roger Ebert was not kidding when he said it was a “tough watch,” and I was not expecting it because I’d read very littleabout the film since its initial 1984 media storm in Texas Monthly and the Houston Chronicle. I’ll never cold-call a film a film from 40 years ago again!
However much this story of astonishingly bad parenting unsettled me, I wanted to give it another shot, since I remembered that I focus on space and place in films, not sexual politics. And, from a place perspective, this film is fantastic.
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It’s always interesting to see the US though the eyes of foreign directors, such as Werner Herzog’s Stroszek, as well as Brokeback Mountain, Chinatown, and Midnight Cowboy, with directorscommenting on Americanness to different degrees. What makes Paris, Texas particularly appealing is that it’s a road trip film, so we see America through a tourist gaze. Wenders comes by this honestly, as he is known for his road trip films, none of which I have seen yet (Buena Vista Social Club is my only other Wenders watch thus far, and I might write about it here). I have, however, appreciated his still photography over the years—his book Written in the West is a collection of photos he took while scouting locations for Paris, and its meditation on the American West as a real place and a mythic place is a new favorite. It captures much of what he says in the film but without the baggage.*
The sense of space Wenders captures in the opening, dramatic shots of Harry Dean Stanton’s character Travis walking in south Texas directly reflect Travis’s loneliness and moral vacuity. The terrain, the plants—everything is as prickly as he is, including the doctor he sees after falling into a state of shock from eating ice when too dehydrated. The dust prevails—to the extent that the bar where Travis eats the ice has a sign reading, “The dust has come to stay. You may stay or pass on through or whatever.”
Everything is bleak, and broke-down-down-and-out in Terlingua, like Travis, until his brother Ben (Dean Stockwell) arrives, when the terrain greens up a little. Here, Wenders’s use of space changes. We shift from space reflecting character to another type of use: the road trip. After a funny scene where Travis and Ben get kicked off a plane on the runway in El Paso, Ben is relegated to driving Travis from Texas to California, where Ben lives. Here, the film builds character as we move through the southwest, never on an interstate. But as we approach civilization, Travis becomes more cogent.
In Los Angeles, Wenders explores space in different ways. The middle-class comfort of Ben’s house overlooks the Ontario Airport.** High on a hill, we can see other houses’ pools, arid canyons, and gridded streets disappearing into the smog in the day and twinkling beautifully at night. We still have a sense of that expansiveness we had in the desert.
Building the theme of expanse in a different way, Wenders has us up on the maintenance access of a billboard sign—Ben’s business is signs—and we get a sense of just how big those suckers are. Have you ever been close to a billboard? By decontextualizing something we see every day, Wenders underscores the epic nature of the story he’s telling. Big sign, big emotion.
In Los Angeles, the streets play a different role than they do in the road trip portions of the film. Travis, having no car, must walk, and it’s on a walk home that he begins building a relationship with his son, Hunter (Hunter Carson). They walk on opposite sides of the road together, separate but together, sort of like how on a road trip you’re together but not making eye contact. At one point Travis also passes a psychotic man on a bridge, shouting paranoid word salad to cars on the interstate below, which, I think, is intended to impartthat Travis is no longer the most down and out person in the film. He’s ready to go.
And with that, we hit the road again, this time with Travis and Hunter to Houston to find Hunter’s mom. They lunch underneath a cloverleaf, which is a great shot but nothing that humans would do. (Actually, nothing that Travis does is something a real human would do.) At least now Travis has graduated from using state highways to interstates. Mostly.***
Wenders plumbs nostalgia throughout the film by using cars and highway stops that were old in 1984. But their stopping at a dinosaur park takes the cake. When I was a kid, the trip up to my grandparents’ place had a town with a dinosaur park, and I recently made sure to take my kid there before my best buds T. Rex, Triceratops, and Stegosaursus are evicted. But then the film hits some nostalgia that Wenders didn’t necessarily plan on—we see the Houston of my youth, the same exits we took, the same stretch of Highway 59—and I was 8 again, hanging on for dear life (Dad was such a bad driver!).
Then Wenders flips a switch and we move from the expanse of the desert and the expanse of the American road to the claustrophobia of a peep show booth. I’ve never been to one, but something that seemed to ring true was when the camera is in the booth with Travis’s extremely estranged wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) and we see that the inside wall is unfinished, with exposed insulation. What a dump. In fact, when Travis is monologuing to Jane, and he keeps going and going, and she’s in that awful space listening to him recount his abuse, I wanted to claw my way out of the rest of the film.
And, of course, we famously never make it to Paris. That photo Travis produces is certainly not Paris:
But no worries. Mother and child reunite. Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell are destined for David Lynch productions. And all is right in the world.
Place name drop in the title? Yes, but subverted
Good, placey b-roll? Yup!
Is the location a character in itself? The Great American Southwest demands succor!
Did it feel like being there? To my continued dismay upon rewatch, yes, except for that stretch of highway I remember. What a gift.
Number of times Dean Stockwell grabs a utility light and lip syncs to Roy Orbison: Oh sorry, wrong film
Final note: The world needs more Houston-based, Houston-filmed movies. How can such a fun, complicated city with so many people be represented by pretty much only Urban Cowboy?
* Wim Wenders: Places Strange and Quiet is also great
** Ontario, CA is just south of a great place name: Rancho Cucamonga—so much fun to say! Say it out loud!
*** There’s a sequence in Nordheim, Texas that is off-interstate
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