Paris, Texas (1984)
★★★½ — Paris, Texas (1984)
Let me put it plainly: if Paris, Texas came out today, we'd call it boring and move on. That's not entirely fair, but it's not entirely wrong either, and I think it's worth sitting with that tension before we get swept up in the critical consensus that this is an untouchable masterpiece.
There's no question the film looks extraordinary. Wim Wenders and his cinematographer have built something genuinely beautiful out of the American Southwest, all burnt orange horizons and dusty two-lane highways stretching into nothing. The atmosphere is thick enough to drink. If you're in the mood to let a film wash over you, to just be somewhere for a couple of hours, it delivers that in spades. I'm not immune to it. There were stretches where I was completely absorbed, not by what was happening exactly, but by the feeling of it. The loneliness of those wide open spaces. The silence between people who have too much to say.
But here's where it gets complicated for me: the story itself feels like it's been left out in that same desert sun and gone a bit soft. There are loose ends that I kept expecting the film to pick back up, threads that it simply drops. A film this slow-moving earns patience from its audience, and patience deserves payoff. I'm not sure I always got one. By the time we reach the final act, I was left with questions that didn't feel deliberately mysterious so much as just... unresolved. There's a difference between ambiguity with purpose and a story that hasn't quite been finished, and I found myself wondering which one I was watching.
And then there's the lead performance. I'll be honest, because what's the point if I'm not: I wasn't convinced. There's a blankness to the central character that I think is meant to read as damaged, haunted, a man reassembling himself from scratch. Sometimes it works. But too often I felt I was watching someone struggle to carry the weight the film needed him to carry. It's perhaps telling that he isn't the lead in all that many films. You can see why Wenders cast him, there's something in the look and the presence, but the emotional engine the story required just wasn't always firing.
The female lead, though? She's the best thing in it, and it isn't close. The scenes she carries have a rawness and a specificity that the rest of the film is reaching for. When she's on screen, everything sharpens. The film suddenly feels like it knows exactly what it's doing. I wish I could say that energy was consistent throughout.
I've seen similar experiments in mood-over-narrative work brilliantly. You Won't Be Alone pulls off something comparable, where atmosphere and interiority do much of the heavy lifting, and I think it lands more consistently than this does. Paris, Texas has the ambition but not always the discipline.
On a first viewing it's an engaging enough experience. The images stay with you, a few of the scenes genuinely linger, and there's something to be said for a film that takes its time and trusts silence. But would I revisit it? Probably not. Would I press it into someone's hands and tell them they have to see it? Not really. It sits in that awkward middle ground of a film I'm glad I watched once and have no great desire to watch again.
Three and a half stars, and even that feels like I'm being generous to the cinematography.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 1984 | Watched: 2025-04-07
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
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