Paris, Texas: Style and Substance

A lone man (Harry Dean Stanton) walks through the desert, dressed in a tattered black suit and dirty red baseball cap. His face is covered in dirt, his eyes weary, his beard filthy. He stops and looks out at the sprawling landscape in front of him, seemingly unaffected by his predicament that we—the viewers—assume to be serious. He takes a sip of water out of a dusty bottle and walks on. 

We soon learn that this man is Travis Henderson, a divorced father with apparent amnesia, who’s been missing and hasn’t been heard from by his family – or even his young son – in four years. When his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) hears that Travis has been found alone in the West Texas desert, he drives there from California to take Travis back to Los Angeles and the life that he disappeared from four years prior. 

From this phenomenal opening, it’s clear that Paris, Texas (released in 1984, directed by Wim Wenders) is an impressive film from a visual standpoint, with consistently striking imagery, beautiful landscapes, and captivating ways the characters interact within those landscapes. Not only is the cinematography stunning, but it brings to life a unique quality that I’ve rarely seen in film. That quality is character, specifically character brought to the settings and environments of the film.

Arcing between Houston and Los Angeles, the plot follows the characters as they travel through the Southwestern US. It is here that Robby Müller’s cinematography adds a second layer to the film. There’s the first layer – a story of a man trying to break back into a life he left – and the second, a visual essay of the American Southwest. The latter is made up of a reel of images, like Houston peep shows in dicey alleyways covered in murals of New York City and the Statue of Liberty, conjuring up images of an idealized America in which no man feels the need to wander through the desert and no child spends their early years with no memory of their father. All the images in this “reel” show us something. They can be dissected for their symbolism, as is the case with the alleyway mural, but they also serve as tools to flesh out the texture and character of a setting, such as Travis and his son eating lunch in the bed of a pickup truck, parked under a highway in a large snake-like intersection in Los Angeles.

Its visual elements alone could propel Paris, Texas into a category of high acclaim even if it had little to offer when it comes to emotional punch and plot. But that is far from the case. What I didn’t expect after the first scene of Travis walking through the desert, is the degree to which the events of the plot resonated with me emotionally. In a rare way, Paris, Texas delivers both the stylistic and substantive elements that make up a film. The story is tenderly and carefully told, and many scenes leave the viewer with too little information to predict what’s next, but enough information to become ever more deeply invested in the characters. This continues throughout the runtime, up to when the story reaches its emotional climax. By the time the credits rolled, I was left genuinely moved and emotionally affected. And thanks to its visual and stylistic techniques, I was also left with a strong, newfound sense of wonder, a fresh and dazzling perspective of the 1980s American Southwest. Overall, Paris, Texas has more than one thing to offer, and its offerings are both unique and brilliant.