Film review: Paris, Texas (1984)

Finally, a good film.  I saw this in the mid-80s and not since, so it was funny revisiting it.  At the time I'd never been to America and I'd never seen another Wim Wenders film (or Dean Stockwell or Natassja Kinski in anything else - I'd probably seen Harry Dean Stanton get messily devoured in Alien).  I remember thinking the film was amazing and tragic, and while I still think it's very good, I don't see the tragedy.  It's a long film, and a slow film, but it doesn't drag, and it's absolutely gorgeous (and, of course, has an amazing Ry Cooder soundtrack).  It makes both Los Angeles and Texas look beautiful and very livable (so that dates it) which means they must have filmed it in the winter or early spring, because they're walking around in the desert with jackets on at the beginning.  It's also funny to see that one of the cars they drive around in is just like the Oldsmobile Jami had when I met her ("an inferior model," she sneers).  Anyway, in case you haven't seen it, the basic plot is as follows: the film opens with Harry Dean Stanton walking through an incredibly picturesque part of the desert in South Texas/Mexico (in a bright red cap, so my first thought was "Trump has ruined even red caps").  He finds an apparently abandoned "left to the dust" store with power and a fridge and helps himself to ice from said fridge and then passes out (in front of the owner who was sitting in the shadows the whole time).  He wakes up in the care of a slightly corrupt doctor (who is German, because apparently the American West is well-stocked with Germans (see also Baghdad Cafe)) but is apparently mute and amnesiac.  However, the doctor finds a phone number on it, calls it, and it's Dean Stockwell, the main character (whose name is Travis)'s brother.  The brother (Walt) designs billboards and lives in LA and is none-too-pleased to hear that his brother needs picking up in the depths of Texas, in part because Travis vanished 4 years ago, and shortly thereafter so did his wife, after leaving their 4 year-old son on the doorstep of the brother and his wife (Anne, who is French - maybe this film had international financing?  Or maybe Wim Wenders just cast his friends?).  Since then they have raised the son (Hunter) as their own and are very attached to him.  But Walt goes to pick up Travis, and after some time gets him to talk, but the first thing he says is "Paris" and asks if they can go there.  "It's a bit out of the way" says Walt.  Of course, it emerges that he means Paris Texas, which is probably where he was walking in his fugue state.  He carries around a photo of a plot of desert land there which he bought years ago because his parents always told him that's where they first made love, and he figures he might have been conceived there.  (Doesn't sound like much of a reason to me, but I bet it made sense to my teenage self.)  After some Rain Man like business of stopping a plane and getting off, and insisting on getting exactly the same rental car back, they drive home to LA.  There follows a good chunk of film that is quietly heartwarming (shut up, it is!  YOU watch it!) as Travis (who is still unable to sleep and won't explain what caused both him and his wife to disappear) gently inveigles his way into Hunter's affection, to the increasing worry of Anne in particular.  Nonetheless it is Anne who reveals to Travis that she knows that Travis's wife (Jane) deposits a check into an account she set up for Hunter every month on the 5th in a bank in Houston.  So Travis decides to go find her (which might have been Anne's plan) but takes Hunter (which definitely wasn't).  The last third or so of the movie is them going there, staking out the bank (which, this being Houston, is HUGE) and following Jane to her place of employ, which turns out to be a kind of peep show place, where it's set up like the reptile house at the zoo: you go into a little room and are separated by a big pane of glass (which is actually a two-way mirror, so the girl on the other side can't see you) and look at your choice of venues (kitchen, schoolroom, poolside, whatever) where a young woman comes and listens to what you say over an intercom (it's an old-fashioned phone on the client's side) and talks back.  This means Travis can look at Jane without her knowing it's him.  He sees her once then goes back to the hotel with Hunter, after first getting plastered.  Then he records a message for Hunter on a tape, leaves before he gets up, and the last 20 minutes or so of the movie are him talking to Jane back in the little mirror-room, first "telling her a story" about a couple he knows, that is of course their story, explaining their break up, and you see Natassja Kinski (who, I didn't realize back in the 80s, was apparently trying a Texan accent, with very mixed success - but it doesn't matter, because she's so affecting) slowly realize what's going on and who it is.  Travis tells her where Hunter is and then leaves, and the last scenes of the film are him watching from a parking lot through the window of the hotel as Hunter and Jane are re-united and then driving off into the night.
Thoughts: although the film was written by Sam Shepard, famous for plays about drunken people yelling at each other that make Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? look like Jane Austen, it's very gentle and everybody in it is basically decent.  In fact, you are sort of misled by the mood of the film into thinking a great tragedy has happened, but actually it's about a little boy who has not just one set of parents who love him but two.  Everybody should be so lucky!  Of course, being parents now ourselves, we pointed out to each other that this whole scenario was very impractical, and what should really happen is that Jane and Hunter should move to LA so Hunter could stay in his good school with his friends, and Jane could get a job working for the billboard company and maybe live in the spare room.  Meanwhile Travis can go and get a job so he can start paying for the house he wants to build in Paris.  Then Jane and Hunter can visit in the holidays.  There, solved!  Strange that these thoughts never occurred when I saw it as a teen and saw it as an epic tragic love story.
Is this a great film?  Well, apparently its star has dimmed somewhat since it won at Cannes.  I think it probably looked so much better than the dross coming out of Hollywood in the Reagan years that it was falsely elevated.  I'm not even sure it's the best Wim Wenders film (I find Alice in the Cities even more affecting, and the little girl in that is amazing.  (Hunter is good too, but he is Karen Black's son.)  And of course there's Wings of Desire.  But both of those are in black and white and a major selling point of Paris is the gorgeous technicolored vistas of the American west.  And that music.  So maybe it's best viewed as a mood piece, something you just give yourself up to without thinking about it too much.  Ideal for teens, although I don't know if today's teens would sit still for a slow-moving 2 1/2 hour movie.
(Film Trivia: John Lurie, famous for The Lounge Lizards, Fishing With John and latterly, Twitter, shows up very briefly as a boss type at the peep show place.  He is probably most famous for starring in the early films of Jim Jarmusch (seen Fishing with John in the link above) like Stranger than Paradise...which was shot on stock left over from a Wim Wenders movie.)