Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Nastassja Kinski
Directed by Wim Wenders, Written by Kit Carson and Sam Shepard
I watched this movie as a teen on cable, and I remember thinking it was boring artsy crap. Years later I watched Wings of Desire and liked it. More recently I watched the documentary collaboration between Wenders and Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club. It was beautiful and inspiring, with moving steadycam shots of decrepit, once lavish buldings. Each week I set up my tivo to record movies the following week, and Paris, Texas was one of the HD films that got pulled into the queue. Watching it now, it was an intensely personal experience. Everything in it worked at something buried in my subconscious, sweeping me up without me knowing it.
All the colors are pronounced, as photographed by Robby Müller, who is responsible for the looks of 24 Hour Party People, Dead Man, Barfly, =
To Live and Die in LA, and the legendary Repo Man. Nastassja Kinski is not believable as a Texan but is pretty as sin. There isn’t a sarcastic note in the whole picture.
Paris, Texas is a like a look back in time with an un-cynical and loving eye toward that most maligned decade, the 80s. In the parking lot pictured above you would see if you looked behind the building, the two dinosaurs which you also saw In Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. I’m waiting for posterity to take an objective look back at the 80s and to see it for what it really was, a beautiful period for film where some of the best movies ever were produced. You think I’m kidding, look at Raiders of the Lost Arc, Raging Bull, Silkwood, The Big Chill, Hoosiers, the Color of Money, Wall Street, Mississippi Burning, Do the Right Thing, Scarface, Full Metal Jacket, Blade Runner, The Empire Stikes Back, etc…