DVDs:

	Paris, Texas Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Berry 20th Century Fox, 2004 average customer review:based on 82 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Paris, Texas is a straight forward story, yet mystifying as it discloses very little for the audience. This is Wim Wenders intention as he directed the film. He wants to coerce the audience to participate cerebrally, and if not the cinematic experience will be lost in time. The bewildering element surrounds Travis and his emotional journey through loss, grief, and love. It is through these emotional states that the story expands, but the tale seems to be fixed in time as the progress is minimal. This simplicity brings about a brilliant cinematic experience, which is enhanced by stunning cinematography and vivid colors as the mirage of the desert heat plays tricks on the mind.

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The 2nd greatest movie of all time (after ERASERHEAD)

Sort of the antithesis of the type of movie ERASERHEAD is, this human drama near-epic is peaceful and down-to-earth, not to mention the only good movie Wenders has ever made. Harry Dean Stanton delivers one of the greatest performances ever captured on screen as a man desperately trying to run from and forget the past. After disappearing for years, he is found near-dead in a desert bar. A phone number in his pocket leads doctors to his brother, played by Dean Stockwell, who flies out to Texas from Los Angeles to pick him up. We spend the next two hours gradually finding out exactly what has happened. Stanton's confrontation with Natassja Kinksi is amazingly heart-wrenching. Quite possibly the most beautiful film in motion picture history.

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Magnificent!

In the sixties Antonioni made a similar work about the hopeless , the loneliness of the human being . This tragic mood in a certain way was released again in this work in the eighties with Paris Texas where the sense of the search is bay far , much more important that the search in itself . In the opening shot we see an incredible scene in the vastity of the desert where the wind and the sand seem to be the only friends of our desperate man .
Slowly the camera will show us with merciless focus the nucleus , the dramatis personae . The mirror dialogue sequence with Natasha Kinski is one of the saddest and best achievements ever made for any other film maker. And it is really amazing that all along the years the style of Wenders ran parallel to Antonioni concerns . That is why both of them decided to work togethetr in that film titled Beyond the clouds (1995) with the master of the great silences Michelangelo Antonioni.
This is (in my personal opinion) the second best movie of Wenders , since I consider The wings of desire his most powerful and artistic issue .
Wenders is a poet who inspires in the little concerns of citizen without importance . But the form in which he tells the citizen story is what it really counts . Deeply introspective , the most of their pictures are inmersed in a nosthalgical mood but never conclude in a pesimist conclusion .
One of the most controversial films in the eighties but also powerful and convincing .
Watch it !

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A DVD worthy of a classic film - however... (film spoilers)

(A quick personal note: I wrote this review a week after the DVD came out and I was sadly misinformed to the formatting of this classic. As a result of this faulty information, I wrote the first paragraph you will read below in response and pretty much in anger, but... I have since found out that it WAS released on Widescreen format and also with many features included, so my sincere apologies are necessary and essential here before you read my shabby review. Sorry to anyone I might have accidently misled. Anyway...)

(( Original title: This DVD version is a RIPOFF! DON'T BUY IT! (film spoilers) ))

Another fine film has been destroyed by making it a FULL SCREEN presentation, with ZERO features, commentaries, etc.
Can you believe that? If any movie needed to be released in Widescreen, this was the one! UN-FRIGGIN-BELIEVABLE!!!

(From the reviewer: Once again? I was wrong, and I'm sorry.)

Now, about the movie itself? 5 STARS. I will not try to give too much away, as there are a few minor spoilers here, but please understand, this movie has that rare kind of intensity.

Wim Wenders realized his glorious love for all things Western and Harry Dean Stanton deserved an Oscar for his performance here as Travis, and we find him at the beginning of the film wandering under the vast open skies and desert under the hot Texas sun alone as he drinks from a small jug of water.

A local sheriff finds him, and after questioning him (as Travis doesn't answer), he goes through his clothes and finds a slip of paper with his brother Walt's (Dean Stockwell) number.

Walt comes to get him and we find out that he has been missing for 4 years. He takes Travis back to LA with him where we now see his 7 year old son Hunter, who was abandoned there by Travis' wife, is curious to know who he is.

We find Travis is a disaster, and emotionally vacant, to everyone, and even Hunter. The film takes us on an emotional downslide as the mysteries of what he may or may not have done, what he wanted to do with his life and his motivations to put his family back together are slowly and painfully revealed, as he is clearly still haunted by the memories of his past, but still wants to make things right.

All he ever wanted was a piece of land, to re-build his childhood home, and to be happy. This idea has brought him to a personal crossroad, and after spending a brief time in Tinseltown he finally leaves LA with his Hunter in tow to confront Jane (played all too briefly played by Nastassja Kinski) when he hears she is living in Houston.

In the finale, in one of the most emotionally revealing and heart- and gut- wrenching conversations I've ever seen put on film, Travis and Jane (played beautifully by Nastassja Kinski) finally confront each other (of a sorts) and confess how they feel, and what had and has happened. You have to see the scene to understand it, I won't spoil THAT.

This movie is about thinking, and crappy thoughts, and visuals, and even though it shows very little of a plot, that's okay because it's about Travis trying to pick up the pieces of all of the hearts he has broken and gluing them together again. It's haunting, and sad, and will make you weep if you EVER have been in a situation of unresolved relationships and heartache.

The music score by Ry Cooder is sad, billowy, and floats you over the dried yellowed land, carrying you along as the silent stoic visuals of the Old West are brought alive and complimented by Wim - or is it the other way around?

On another note: Wim Wenders chose Paris, Texas as title of his movie by simply reading the United States Road Atlas, but no scenes were ACTUALLY EVER SHOT THERE.

Wim Wenders (and to a lesser odder extent David Lynch) had that kind of cerebral touch in the late 80's and early 90s. You knew it existed, but you never knew what was around the safe corner. This movie haunted my life for several years after I first watched it. It made me sit in corner and not want to deal with reality. It was also a personal hazy reflection of my life in the early 90s and it still makes me kinda sad.

All in all, a visceral experience in film, slow in a LOT of places, but it's supposed to be! I get it! It's worth your examination, honestly.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, page 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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