I didn’t know there was a Paris, Texas

I’ll be honest here. Wim Wenders is one of those directors I have always heard about and never seen. Nope, I have never seen Wings of Desire (1987) or Until the End of the World (1991). The guy has around thirty movies to his directing credit, and I have never seen a one of them. I was interested, sure, but his movies always sounded like they would be boring, and I tend to veer away from those really intelligent movies.

Then my wife starts looking for movies about Texas—we live in Houston, after all—and she stumbles across this film called Paris, Texas (1984) that she has never heard of. So of course she requests it from the library, along with View from the Top (2003) and The Trouble with Angels. I figured they were all of the same caliber—terrible, that is.

As it starts, I see that it’s directed by Wim Wenders, and now I’m intrigued, because I’m supposed to know this guy, being a film lover and all.

Paris, Texas chronicles the story of Harry Dean Stanton’s character, and the film opens with a shot of him wandering through the West Texas desert wearing a ragged suit. He manages to make it to an apparently empty bar in the middle of the desert. He’s parched, so he goes to the refrigerator but finds only beer, so he grabs a cube of ice, begins to suck on it, and then collapses. There was some guy sitting there all along, and the film cuts with the guy murmuring, “What the hell?”

It’s quite beautiful, actually. I think it’s one of the best scenes in the entire film, and that’s saying a lot, for there are a lot of good scenes here. We don’t know anything about the guy, and my biggest complaint is about how it finally reveals the back-story. This same scene is also really interesting and compelling, however. It’s a bit pretentious and long-winded, but the works in a remarkable way.

So I’m having trouble saying anything coherent about Paris, Texas, and think this has to do with both the meandering plot and the way I will be forced to give everything away simply through the process of describing it. Let me not do this by giving you several reasons to see this movie:
· Parts of it take place in Houston.
· It was made three years before Blue Velvet (1987), and it traces a lot of same ground, except in Texas, which makes it more interesting.
· It will make you appreciate what you have—families are fragile and precious, after all. If there’s one thing that this movie does well, it’s showing us how all of our positions are relative and how those things shift so easily.
· It’s named after a place that you never actually see, except in a photograph—now that’s interesting.

Harry Dean Stanton is an Everyman who wants to make everything right after he screwed everything up. It’s sad, yes, but it’s interesting to see this child-like character attempt to make up for his own childishness. Watching him grow throughout the movie isn’t as interesting as it could have been, but Paris, Texas still does it pretty well.

So the bottom line is that when I have to deal with an intelligent movie, I’m without words. I think my strength is drawing out pop culture drivel. And with that in mind, I will review the remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) next time. Now there’s a movie with some undiscovered layers! When it comes to Paris, Texas, it seems like it’s all rather obvious. It’s too smart to draw anything out because Wenders meant for all of it to be there anyway. Which sounds as if I’m saying that these other films don’t know what they’re doing, which isn’t quite the case.

Maybe I will explain all of that later…

As a sidenote, I think I am going to start watching movies about Texas and especially about Houston. I would love to get recommendations from readers—the two or three of you who keep coming back….

Grade for Paris, Texas: 8