“For me, the American West is where things fall apart” (Wim Wenders)
I recently went to the cinema with Enrica to see Paris, Texas by Wim Wenders, which has been restored in 4K on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. It’s a movie I had heard a lot about over the years, but I had never come around to seeing it. It’s famous, among other things, for its photography. I must say, it didn’t disappoint.
Many of the shots in the film look like photographs. Wenders and Robby Müller, the director of photography, seem to have gotten their inspiration from artists such as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore. In addition to the locations and the colours, another element in common with these artists is the movie’s emphasis on the everyday and the mundane, including the boredom and loneliness of life in an advanced capitalist society.
According to the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw, “The lonely geographies of Texas and the unglamorous Los Angeles suburbs are superbly caught, and Wenders and Shepard [who co-wrote the script] indulge a love of motels with their heartbreaking neon signs about TV and air-con”.
These latter aspects are what really struck me. They stand in complete opposition to the feelings expressed by the story. The movie’s landscapes and locations are often symbols of alienation, while the words and interactions of the protagonists convey sentiments of attachment, relatedness and belonging – or at least the desire to achieve these states. It’s as if Wenders decided to deliberately contrast these two planes.
There are many examples of this contrast in the film, from Travis and Jane talking about their past in the peep show booth to the son listening to the audiocassette his father has left him, with Houston’s massive skyscrapers in the background, or when the father and son decide to go look for Jane while eating snacks underneath an elevated highway. I wonder whether Wenders has ever said anything about this.
The director has written about the photographic journey that preceded the shooting of Paris, Texas in the revised edition of the book that collects the images made during that trip, called Written in the West, Revisited. The book contains a number of photos of the small town of Paris in Texas, which we never see in the film, and a description of Wenders’s visit there.
(The movie stills in this post are from this article.)
