Paris, Texas

Harry Dean Stanton's only leading role came in Wim Wenders' 1984 film Paris, Texas, which was written by Sam Shepard. That film has lost two of its major parts in the last six weeks.

The film won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and is a favorite among the cognoscenti, though it did not do much business. It is a slow-moving film, relying as much on the imagery of the desert and neon signs as it is on plot. But it is a beautiful film, made great by Stanton, especially a monologue he has late in the film.

We see him first walking across the desert, with no particular destination. He wears a red baseball cap, and a well-dusted suit and tie. He collapses in a small town in south Texas, and his brother (Dean Stockwell), who thought he was dead, goes to get him. Stanton is mute, not telling Stockwell where has been the last four years, when he walked out on his family. Stockwell and his wife are now taking care of Stanton's son (Hunter Carson). Jane, Stanton's wife, has also vanished.

Paris, Texas is two road films in one. The first is when Stockwell drives Stanton to Los Angeles, where Stockwell lives. Slowly, Stanton comes back into the world of humans. He is like a small child, remembering little. He is awkward with Carson, but eventually they bond. When Stanton has fully retained his faculties, he decides to go looking for Jane (Nastassja Kinski), with Carson in tow, the second road trip.

Paris, Texas is a long film, and requires some concentration. I find these kind of films better on home video, where I can take breaks (when I saw it originally in New York City in a theater I was a bit bored). There are long takes, and the final scenes, when Stanton finds Kinski in a fantasy booth joint in Houston, have long uninterrupted dialogue.

Much of the film is about seeing. Characters are frequently looking, but not necessarily seeing. Stanton watches the airplanes with binoculars. Stockwell, after Stanton has run from their motel room early on, walks down a railroad. Stockwell looks down the tracks, and says, "What's out there?" The fantasy booths are such that the customer can see the girl, but she can't see them because of a one-way mirror. She does not recognize his voice at first, because later she says that all voices sound like his.

Paris, Texas is also about loss and redemption. Stanton asks how long he has been gone, and is told four years. His son is now eight. "Half a boy's life," he says, with the kind of line reading that gives you goose bumps. The film is really Stanton figuring out what he wants, and going to get it, which is in essence what all of narrative literature is.

As someone who is been in plenty of peep-shows, I must admit I've never seen one like the one in the movie, and wonder if they even exist. Girls enter a small room that is given some art direction. Kinski is first in a hotel room, then, during Stanton's monologue, a kitchen, which suggests domesticity, the kind that they lost. There also seems to be no rendering of payment. These kind of things sometimes bother me. Other than than, Paris, Texas is a great film.