A man coming out of the desert. All alone, with no future and no past. Shortly before dying of thirst, he comes across a barrack in which a German exile takes care of him. The German takes the stranger's wallet to find out his identity and calls his brother. When I saw these first minutes of Paris Texas for the first time, I could not imagine how the film would continue. Anyone who sees many films knows this feeling: no matter whether a work is great or not, one usually knows quite quickly what will happen next. Paris Texas is different and that alone makes Wenders Film so fascinating. It seems as if we're looking at a picture that moves, but doesn't underline dialogue with pictures. Wenders has created a completely individual work about loss and loneliness. The characters originate from the fantasy of the author Sam Shepard. They fit into the work of Wenders, who prefers to make road movies in which men search for meaning in the vastness of the landscape. He has never hit this vastness better than in Paris Texas. Harry Dean Stanton plays the lost man and which actor seems both more abandoned and more angry? We don't find out the reasons why he walks alone through the desert, but we do learn how great and painful his loss was. In former times he was married and father of a little boy. After his disappearance his son grew up with his brother (Dean Stockwell). The mother (Nastassja Kinski) also disappeared. Hunter Carson plays the boy and he goes to my heart as I never experienced it again with a child actor! Now the lost one (called Travis) has the crazy idea to bring his family together again. Very slowly he approaches his son, although he does not yet know exactly how to deal with a child at all. All he knows about his wife is that she withdraws money from a certain bank once a month. When he meets her, she cuts one of these discs behind which prostitutes talk to their clients by telephone. The john sees the whore, but she doesn't see him. This is the starting point of the most moving scene in the film. Paris Texas expresses feelings, exposes them and this is more important to the film than telling a story. It's less about missing persons than about lost feelings. At the very beginning, Wenders captures them with a Super 8 film that shows Travi's past. Wenders' pictures are always looking for people who lose themselves in the distance. In front of us the stony landscape of Texas, where the Kaffs have strange names like "Paris" or "Manchester" (who wants to play ml Google Map). Nevertheless, it hasn't become an American movie at all: In the denial of "storytelling", which has to give way to the revelation of inwardness, Wenders has made a very German film. He is fascinated by American culture: the film is accompanied by the play of a single slide guitar playing Ry Cooder! American music and mythology are what make Paris Texas so special, with the astonished look of the foreigner. Paris Texas is Wenders best film, certainly also because he has adapted "real" American dialogues to his pictures. Sam Shephard allows his characters to get to know each other without many words. Their deepest thoughts and fears don't have to be explained in dialogues. With his passion to experiment Paris Texas seemed to fit hardly into the popcorn cinema of the 80s. The film is a latecomer, not only the New German Cinema, but also the kind that could be produced in Hollywood in the late 60s. Paris Texas is true, profound and brilliant! For me, it's one of those films that I can see again and again and am happy afterwards.
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