Paris, Texas15A146 min
Synopsis
Paris, Texas, the title of Wim Wender’s 1984 Palm d’Or winner, says it all. From the opening shots of the great Harry Dean Stanton emerging disorientated from the desert to the sound of Ry Cooder’s slide guitar, to the final scene of a pick-up driving off into the night, this is clearly a movie about America. It is a love letter to the country’s landscapes, its cars, roads, late-night diners, and cheap motels. At the same time, however, it quintessentially European. The film was made without a penny of American money, and it shows. Hollywood might fund a road movie where a long-lost father tries to reconnect with the son he abandoned, but not with the screenplay Pulitzer Prize-winner Sam Shepard wrote for Wenders. This is a film where the main character remains mute for the first forty-five minutes, but climaxes with a ten-minute monologue. It also refuses to placate the viewer with a Hollywood ending. This is effortlessly masterful filmmaking.