Essay On Paris Texas

In Wim Wenders’ 1984 film, Paris, Texas, we find its theme of loneliness harboured in Travis Henderson, but very much so in the film’s imagery, eloquently captured by Dutch cinematographer, Robby Müller, “When I choose to work on a film, the most important thing to me is that it is about human feelings. I try to work with directors who want their films to touch the audience.” And his imagery does just that in Paris, Texas.

Müller’s shots range from vast and spacious Texas deserts, to the quiet suburbs of Los Angles, and then to the southern state highways, eateries, motels and petrol stations, cool and smothered in neon lighting (Figure1.6)- (Figure 1.7). It is these locations that will make up the lonely and spacious American backdrops that

Henderson frequents throughout the film. And so in having Robby Müller’s receptive eyes capturing these wide, deeply focused and colourful scenes, it has provided Wenders with the opportunity to pour and blend Travis’ lonely persona into them.

In their book: The Films of Wim Wenders, Robert Kolker and Peter Beicken believe that “Paris, Texas’ America is a fantasyland, a place of striking images, a mise en scene of desert and city sometimes barley hospitable to the human figure and in which it must struggle to create a comfortable space.” (p.

137). It is in these seemingly ‘inhospitable’ locations, that Paris, Texas is able to form a symbiotic relationship between character and environment, creating a backdrop of empty spaces, for an equally empty man. Thomas Dunn helps to illustrate my point in his book: Loneliness a Way of Life, where he suggests that, “The very spaciousness of the film encourages us to think about the meaning of emptiness and the habitations of the human.” (p.104). Additionally in Wim Wenders’ book: The Logic of Images: Essays and Conversations (1992) he describes his view upon the relationship between the image and the story, suggesting that he, “sees the story as a kind of vampire, trying to suck all the blood from an image.” (p. 53) This exemplifies Wenders’ approach to filmmaking; each shot is executed within its own realm of beauty. Nevertheless this highlights Wenders’ intentions of portraying loneliness more through the imagery than anything

else.

A prominent example of the “symbiotic” relationship I speak of can be found in the film’s opening scene (figure 1.7); a wide aerial shot glides over a desert mountain range; desolate and scorching hot. As an audience we are provided with a definite perspective in both the landscape and isolation of Travis, both literally and metaphorically. He is the vast and bleak desert, in the sense of his loneliness, as well as the figure confusedly walking through it.
As this opening scene cuts to a medium shot of Travis, we see him revealed for the first time. He’s a middle-aged man, dishevelled and gaunt looking with his clothes in tatters. And so it is in this first image of Travis that we are able to first conceive an individual who’s been lost for some time.
To back my point further, Robert Kolker and Peter Beicken believe that “His initial appearance is both incongruous and indicative of a life riddled by conflicts and inconsistencies.” (p.119, 1993) As well as this, Thomas Dunn comments on the scene suggesting that Travis is, “returning from nowhere, reentering life after a four-year period in which he had disappeared from the world of those who knew him. He is silent, traumatized by some terrible event.” (p.103). Yet despite these initial clues, Wenders does not offer any explanation to where, or why Travis is walking, however Wim Wenders comments on this, suggesting that it all “began with a simple vision of a person who comes out of nowhere and seems to be going nowhere. Hence they immediately take on the themes that inform the lonely self.” (p.104)

Even though this statement reveals the director’s intention, it does not provide an answer to why Travis had decided to take this journey to begin with. However, as the film evolves we find his ‘walking’ to be a prominent characteristic of his. It can be argued then, that Travis’ act of walking re-establishes his need to be alone and constantly on the move. Thomas Dunn believes that Travis “ is defined by walking. He is no flaneur; he walks to erase boundaries, following electric lines, railroad tracks. He is nobody, nobody who walks.” (p.111) In employing Dunn’s argument, but building upon it even more, we may analyse that Travis walks to forget, and runs away from those he loves to punish himself for the wrongs he had committed in the past, specifically those wrongs connected with his wife Jane and their son, Hunter. This then, makes Travis a self-punishing lonely man; never settled and significantly scarred by his past. Another example of this can be witnessed through the important and heartfelt messages he seems to translate only through phone calls or tape recordings, suggesting that Travis is incapable of facing up to his responbilities.

Kolker and Beicken believe that Travis’ “solitude is a cathartic prelude to the overcoming of alienation through the discovery of self and identity (p. 116, 1993,).

Travis in a literal sense, does overcome his isolation; he is whisked back into society and whilst there, must adapt and take responsibility for whatever he had missed in those four mysterious years. Yet Wenders suggests that Travis’ loneliness will still persist on thereafter the film’s final shot, and this only propelled through its evocative resolution. In one of the film’s most iconic scenes, Travis and Jane talk over a phone in a self-reflecting window booth; Travis again barricades himself away and communicates through a phone (Figure 1.8) Hidden from Jane’s sight, he begins a momentous monologue that reveals the very origins of his disappearance, which as he tells, was ignited by the events of one night and the ever-growing turbulence of his and Jane’s relationship, “For the first time, he wished he were far away. Lost in a deep, vast country where nobody knew him. Somewhere without language, or streets. […] He ran until the sun came up and he couldn't run any further. And when the sun went down, he ran again. For five days he ran like this until every sign of man had disappeared. Travis, then ran into the thing he thought” (Paris, Texas.) This is Travis’ last goodbye, but before he goes, he sets out to reunite Jane with Hunter, directing her to find him in a hotel room. Still, Travis does not come into direct contact with Jane and instead watches from afar as they are reunited (Figure 1.9 - Figure 2.0). Travis drives off into the night, unmuted, but not unbound from the chains of isolation; he drives back to nowhere, the exact place he had come from. “He is realizing the great lesson of experience, overcoming the condition that had led him to his lonely place. In his long walk Travis had tried to obliterate that distinction, and had come close to succeeding, but only by acting so as to risk hastening his death. But now he is someone else, a sojourner in life again, resigning himself to the condition of the human.” (p.118) It is therefore in this ambiguous ending that Wenders has simply ended the film with how it began, with Travis as a lonely wondering man.