MOVIE NOTES: Paris, Texas

[AUTHOR'S NOTE: next in a series of brief notes on films I've recently seen. Also: SPOILER ALERT.] PARIS, TEXAS (1984) SUMMARY Quintessential Sam Shepard work, here. A broken man (Travis, played by Harry Dean Stanton) is found wandering the desert somewhere between Texas and Mexico. His brother Walt is contacted, and brings him back home to LA, where Walt and his wife Ann are caring for Travis' 8-year-old son, Hunter. Turns out that Travis has been missing for about four years, and Travis's wife Jane has also been in extremely limited contact, apparently living somewhere in Houston. This is the backdrop of a film exploring the meanings of family, of adulthood, of relationships, and of delusion. The more I think about this film, the more I like it. MEANING OF THE TITLE One of the few things Travis was carrying with him through the desert was a photograph of a plot of land he purchased before he became estranged from his family. It's in Paris, Texas. He later explains that he believes that he was conceived in that town, and that he had dreams of moving there with his family before everything fell apart. Of course, the title consistently being "the window into the story," there's much more to it than that. MOST SIGNIFICANT REVELATION Jane's livelihood was a surprise, particularly when put in such stark relief of the industry in which she found herself. The camera work throughout those segments was unbelievably polished. It was painstaking film making, but appeared natural and effortless. BEST CHARACTER JOURNEY Hunter, the child of Travis and Jane. To have begun life with one set of parents, then taken in by another set of loving, doting parents, and to finally be reunited with one's original parents but realizing they could never be together again is a helluva journey. Put that into an eight year-old kid, and it's staggering what Hunter must have been experiencing. WORST TELEGRAPHED MOMENT I struggle to find something to list here. Everything in the film was just so goddamned good. Pacing and storytelling were flawless. There was hardly a wasted moment, hardly a wasted second. I do find it disappointing that Travis leaves Hunter to his mother's care and then just rolls out. But then, the story couldn't be finished with some kind of happy ending. At least for Travis. He was a mess, and I think beyond help. UNSUNG HERO Ann, who struggled with relinquishing her adopted son to his biological parents: neither of whom have their shit together. CINEMATOGRAPHY I'll never forget the reflection of Travis's face superimposed over Jane's face in the glass. The one-way mirror reflects reality onto a real "actor" carrying out a role as she is confronted with her real life. I understand that sentence seems conflated, and it likely is, but it's a by-product of watching the life-guiding dreams of Travis crumbling to dust. In that moment: from Travis' viewpoint, it looks like a miniature version of a classic 50's diner. From Jane's viewpoint, the artifice of the setting is starkly naked and clear, almost brutally honest. We watch as she witnesses Travis's disintegration. The exterior shots - be they cityscapes, wide open spaces, or the highways, are classic Shepardian fare, that doesn't disappoint. When paired with Ry Cooder's steel slide-guitar soundtrack (who I think did music for Sam Shepard's stage plays, as well), I'm there. WHAT'S THIS FILM ABOUT? There's a conflation of reality and what one imagines in this film. For example, when one says the word, "Paris," likely the first thing that comes to mind is the city of Paris, France. But there's also a town named Paris in Texas. This kind of upheaval of expectations is a cruel running joke in the film, and is also the reason for Travis's estrangement. What's real and what one -imagines- is real can be woefully different. But when one has an idea, that idea can take over and dominate one's reality to the extent that when confronted with the stark gulf between expectations and the real, only a vacuum exists. Their meeting is physical, realistic, metaphoric. They cannot touch. They cannot even be in the same room together. I'm pretty sure -Paris, Texas- is now in one of my all-time top five films. I became fascinated and romantically connected to Sam Shepard's work since I first read it in my college days, and it's all here. Expectations face-to-face with the real; animal instict and elemental love; fire; ill-fated beings circling one another in obsessive attraction and lust and battle, only to realize neither of them are up to the task; the world, now full of beings broken beyond repair by the crushing weight of reality. All of this, under the big, open, cloudless sky.