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The Continued Development of the Dark Romance with Cinema, 5 December 2005

Author: David H. Schleicher from New Jersey, USA

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Directed by cinematic lyricist Wim Wenders, "Paris, Texas" is a slow-burning masterpiece. Marked at first by stark, beautiful photography of the American Southwest, later by memorable dialogue and conversational intercourse, and lastly by sublime and emotional involving character development, the film transcends the idea of an atmospheric mood piece to deliver an engrossing meditation on loneliness, alienation, family, and redemption.

Character actor Harry Dean Stanton is fantastic in the lead role of Travis as a man who had fallen into an emotional black hole and is then reunited with his brother, who has been raising Travis' young son, Hunter, in an idyllic and loving suburban landscape with his foreign wife, Ann. As Travis slowly begins to grapple with his past and bond with his son, he soon realizes he must find his long, lost wife, Jane (an excellent and understated Nastassja Kinksi), whom he still deeply loves on some level, and abandoned their son years ago shortly after Travis went off the deep end.

This all could've been the plot of Lifetime TV movie, but the European filmmaker's perspective on an all American slice of melodrama adds a undercurrent of intrigue in that you never know what these characters are going to do next, as we soon find Travis practically abducting his son (who eagerly plays along) from his happy new family life to go on a trek to Houston to find Jane.

The closing in scene in a Houston hotel where son and mother are reunited is one of the most fascinatingly rich scenes ever put on screen. Rarely does any one scene work to engage a viewer on so many levels:

First: There is a complex psychological framework that is set into place in the scenes prior between Stanton and Kinski in the peep show booth where she now works (which are two of the most expertly photographed and brilliantly acted scenes I've ever witnessed). Travis has confessed all to his lost love, Jane, and she is clearly in dire straights. His attempt to reunite her with their son is both selfish (in that it is clearly not in the child's best interest to be raised by his emotionally troubled mother when he has loving foster parents waiting for him back home) and selfless, in that he truly feels his only way to repair the damage he has done is to leave after getting mother and son back together.

Second: It is beautifully acted, with Kinski's ghost like entrance, and young Hunter Carson's trepidation. Witness his hand slide across the wall looking for something to grip, and then his hands running through his hair before he finally decides to embrace her.

Third: It is exquisitely photographed. Earlier we see scenes of stark isolation as the child waits in the hotel room. Sofia Coppola later used a similar photographic technique in "Lost in Translation" to show how being alone in a big city, looking down form an anonymous hotel room window, can be one of the loneliest things in the world.

The final scene is both beautiful and emotional, and at the same time makes the viewer wonder, how will this all end? Yes, it is wonderful to see the child and mother reunite, but their new life could easily turn into an emotional hell because of the now absent Travis' misguided attempt at his own redemption.

A film working on so many levels like this is best summed up in its own dialogue. In one scene where Travis is drunk and telling his son some family history, he essentially says that his father was more in love with an "idea of her" than with his actual mother. This is a fantastic movie for people more in love with the romantic "idea of movies" and their potential power as an art form, than with any one movie in particular. As such, this ranks among the best I have ever seen.

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