Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray] by Wim Wenders at DVD Hills.com

Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
by Wim Wenders

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Blu-ray details

Actor: Bernhard Wicki, Dean Stockwell, Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Sam Berry
Director: Wim Wenders
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Robby Müller
Producer: Anatole Dauman
Producer: Chris Sievernich
Producer: Don Guest
Producer: Pascale Dauman
Writer: L.M. Kit Carson
Writer: Sam Shepard
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 147 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2010-01-26
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Criterion

Blu-ray Reviews of Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: Beautiful Blu-ray of Wenders' Dark Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

Criterion's Blu-ray transfer is magnificent. The image is very natural, with great depth - I viewed this via a 1080p projector, and the transfer was as film-like as could be hoped for. The soundtrack is as impressive - with Ry Cooder's music being so integral to the heart of the film, this improvement over DVD is very welcome.

I remember first viewing this at the cinema in the 80s. To be honest, I found it a bit gruelling. At that time I hadn't seen much in the way of European cinema, and the American setting and actors had me expecting a film with not just a different pace but a different emotional world.

Now I find 'Paris, Texas' makes me think of a strange mix of other films.

Firstly, classic Westerns; most notably, 'The Searchers' - primarily for the mood evoked by the vast expanse of landscape, but also for the ultimately unfathomable motivations of the characters - however much you learn about Travis (or Ethan Edwards) the story behind their actions remains incomplete.

Terrence Malick's 'Days of Heaven' also comes to mind - again there is ravishing cinematography, and the overwhelming sense of immense space; there is also the direct connection with Sam Shepherd writing for Wenders and acting for Malick; the characters too share a terrifying vision of love, a vision that seems embodied in their physical surroundings - the superficial beauty is tied to an emotional emptiness, a kind of directionlessness, where ordinary morality is limited in its powers. It's as if both films speak of a freedom, intoxicating and full of promise, but which is also frightening, in that anything is possible and everything feels insecure.

More distant allusions reach to the 'existentialist' American road movies of the late 60s and early 70s, such as 'Vanishing Point' and 'Two-Lane Blacktop'. Where are all these men going? The image of the driver staring out at the world, on an inescapable journey, towards something unknowable (at the most obvious level, towards death), and away from his past - all these films share this perspective.

Ry Cooder's music envelopes the film, augmenting mood, and somehow heightening the importance of any particular image - as an aside, Ry Cooder recorded the entire score in little over a day! The music's role reminds me of Jim Jarmusch's 'Dead Man' - Neil Young's guitar likewise permeates the bones of that film.

Wenders' own European background also suggests links to German cinema of the 70s, notably his own works, but also those of Herzog and Fassbinder. The emotional pathology of the protagonists is starkly reminiscent of the narcissism, dissociation, and quasi-psychotic states of various characters inhabiting Fassbinder's prolific career, and there is a gentler association with Bruno S., especially in 'Stroszek' (once again set in America) - Travis reveals a dislocated child-like aspect to his character, touchingly played out through his contact with his son, Hunter. The pieces of his character are not coherent, however - his chaotic inner life is glimpsed literally through windows or through telephone wires, and along with child-like sympathy, there is rage, envy, jealousy, and despair. These emotions are impossible to bear, and so they are beaten down, his face scored but impassive. His efforts at denial detach him from reality, and Wenders' film charts his brief, and inwardly conflicted and complicated, return to the world shared by others.

The other characters in 'Paris,Texas' also live at one remove from reality. The depressing darkened world of Jane, Nastassja Kinski, is a literal as well as a metaphoric house of fantasies - one wonders if David Lynch was watching. Travis's brother Walt, Dean Stockwell, and his wife Anne, Aurore Clement, also maintain a problematic relationship with the world, despite a superficial normalcy - their stories are only hinted at, yet there is an element of fantasy in their adoption of Hunter as "their own" child, and Anne in particular is worried that losing Hunter will see their relationship, or in her words their "world", collapse.

Unsurprisingly, what I've mentioned goes nowhere near exhausting ideas inspired by the film. It is long, and the narrative is simple - but this is not what makes watching the film a demanding and taxing experience. The emotional foundation of the film is very disturbing - there is pain, and fear, and a real sense of people being broken. This is not meant to be merely a pleasant entertainment. It is harrowing, and it is a meditation not a diversion. The fragility of the human experience is here - in the faces, the images, the words, and most poignantly in Ry Cooder's haunted music.

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Description of Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

German New Wave pioneer Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) brings his keen eye for landscape to the American Southwest in Paris, Texas a profoundly moving character study written by Pulitzer Prize?winning playwright Sam Shepard. Paris, Texas follows the efforts of the mysterious, nearly mute drifter Travis (a magnificent Harry Dean Stanton, whose face is a landscape of its own) to reconnect with his young son, living with his brother (Dean Stockwell) in Los Angeles, and his missing wife (Nastassja Kinski). From this simple setup, Wenders and Shepard produce a powerful statement on codes of masculinity and the myth of the American family, as well as an exquisite visual exploration of a vast, crumbling world of canyons and neon.

Stills from Paris, Texas (Click for larger image)

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Paris, Texas (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]