Paris, Texas, a name that is both imaginative and misleading.
One of the great directors of the "Four Masters of the New German Cinema", Wim. Wenders, in the 1980s to make a film to show the life of Americans from a European perspective, at the beginning of filming, Wenders could not find the ideal shooting location, screenwriter Sam Sharpe told him: "In Texas you can see everything in the United States", so they found a place in Texas, called Paris, this beautiful title came from.
Wim. Wenders, who critics have called the "anthropologist" of directors, has been portraying the loneliness, isolation and confusion of a generation. Wenders' films "have always been on the road" because his work is almost always road movies, searching for his past and present on the road, and the same is true of Paris, Texas.
"Under the Berlin Sky" is Wenders's most widely known work, but "Paris, Texas" is the film that best represents his personal style and the spiritual connotation he has always pursued, and this film won him a worldwide reputation by winning the Palme d'Or at the 37th Cannes Film Festival.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 Return and wandering are symbols of self-retrieval and spiritual home</h1>
"Paris, Texas", whether from the content or the theme, alludes to the corresponding meanings of return and wandering. The male protagonist Travis is retrieved by his brother Walter on the way to the wanderings, from Texas to Los Angeles, and then back to Texas, metaphorically depicting Travis's return to modern society and self-exile because of the search for the utopia in his mind.
Texas to Los Angeles – The wilderness to the return of modern society. The failure of his marriage and the disintegration of his family brought Travis to the brink of mental collapse, and his 4 years of wandering in the wilderness left him almost speechless and ignorant of the changes in the world. After being taken to the bustling metropolis of Los Angeles by Walter, Travis seemed out of place with civilized society, almost becoming an outsider to modern life. In the process of spending time with his son Hunter, he let go of the paranoia of the past, blended into a new life, and worked hard to reconcile with his past self. This return is both physical and spiritual.
"Paris" symbolizes a spiritual utopia. After a long silence, Travis's first words are "Paris," not the fashion capital of France, but a barren land in central Texas. This is the place where his parents fell in love and conceived and gave birth to him, the place where he and his wife bought at the sweetest time of marriage, the place where he made mistakes out of jealousy, so Paris in Texas is a place for Travis to represent life, love and existence, full of sacredness, a kind of spiritual sustenance. At the end of the movie, Travis leaves silently after his wife and children are reunited, and once again goes on the road alone, the difference is that this time it is not wandering, but towards his spiritual home, which is a relief and a transcendence.
"Paris" is a kind of nostalgia. The Travis in the film is the embodiment of the realistic Chinese, and the Paris that Travis has been searching for all his life is a portrayal of the tortuous journey of Wenders' film exploration. Wenders' Paris is france's, and the city is inextricably linked to his famous "travel trilogy" (Alice Roaming the City, The Wrong Move, King of the Highways) and is one of the sources of inspiration for his creations. If cinema is a virtual dream, paris is where dreams begin, because this is where great dreamers such as Godard and Truffaut began. After Wenders went to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s to make films, he felt a lot of discomfort, and the overly commercial filmmaking concept and producer-centered system made him more and more nostalgic for the Artistic Atmosphere of Europe.
Therefore, whether it is Paris in France or Paris in Texas, for Wenders, it is a psychological landmark for the realization of artistic ideals and self-worth, and it is pinned on Wenders' strong nostalgia for Europe. Interestingly, the plot of the film shines into reality, and after one year of filming "Paris, Texas", Wenders, like Travis, put down everything alone and returned to his hometown to make the famous "Under the Berlin Sky".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 "Breaking away" is just an illusion, life is a wandering without an end</h1>
If Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" reflects the spiritual emptiness of postwar American youth, then Wenders' films reflect the spirit of the european and American generation in the 80s, and his films are indispensable to the road, and the protagonist has been lost on the road, returning, leaving, looking for answers to life.
Some critics have summed up Travis's behavior as a phrase that has been fashionable in recent years: "breaking away." In fact, Travis can't break it, can't give up it, and it's not far away. Can the blood relationship with the son be broken? Can I give up my affection with my brother, son, and wife? Is it really possible to escape the dark past?
The answer, of course, is no.
Others say Travis and his wife don't love each other enough. But the way of love has different standards for different people, sometimes emotions overwhelm the intellect, too fanatical love eventually becomes a shackle and a burden, Travis's love is the whole possession of the wife's body and mind, on the grounds of too much love for each other, it will hurt each other. When he realized that his wife would leave because of freedom, he tied his wife to the bed like a madman, and finally one day the house caught fire, and the wife and children disappeared. Therefore, Travis's 4 years of wandering, deliberately not communicating with people, his renunciation is actually an escape, a kind of atonement. In the endless desolate desert, he was alone, in the bustling city, in the lively crowds, he was still lonely. If the mind is not quiet, where can people escape?
In the small strip club chat room, Travis meets his wife Jane, but Jane is faced with a mirror, and she can only talk to herself and chat with the guests, but she does not know that it is his husband sitting opposite. In this way, the husband and wife recalled the reasons for the failure of the marriage in this way without seeing each other. This "strange" reunion scene is a metaphor for the love of the two people, but the diaphragm and distance cannot be eliminated.
The alienation and misunderstanding between lovers is like that delicate mirror, and people have to look through the wall and through the phone to dare to express their inner feelings and thoughts. Travis left his son to Jane and embarked on a long journey, because he knew that his "return" was futile, and despite his efforts to integrate and save, the gap between himself and his wife and children could not be bridged.
As the audience passes through Texas - Los Angeles - Houston, the road becomes an invisible role in the film, not only a simple background, the long and winding highway is like a lonely and empty spiritual world, and the scenery on the road alludes to the changes in the characters' inner complicated emotions. The blue sky, the empty desert, and the beauty of the invisible edge reflect the smallness of human beings. Those flashing road signs, those unknown intersections, just like the emotional exit that the characters are constantly looking for, Travis can only get inner peace if he keeps wandering and searching, returning himself to the empty external world.
The road is not far, what is far away is the inner distance between people. If you take entering the hearts of others as the end point, then life is destined to be a wandering without an end.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 Documentary and poetic coexistence, Wim. Wenders' unique cinematic style</h1>
Some netizens have commented: If you have inadvertently seen a movie with rich colors, mirror-destroying soul and dispensable dialogue, then the director is likely to be Wim. Wenders.
With a slow-paced narrative, no thrilling scenes, no twists and turns in the storyline, most of which are trivial matters in life, Wenders hopes to resonate with audiences through a documentary style that is close to daily life. This style of cinema is reminiscent of the Japanese film master Yasujiro Ozu, but in fact Wenders and Ozu have deep roots. In 1985, he made a documentary called "In Search of Ozu", which expressed praise and tribute to idols on the other side of the world.
Simplifying the storyline and weakening dramatic conflict are lessons wenders learned from Yasujiro Oz's films. The exploration of life in "Paris, Texas" reminds people of Ozu's "Flowers on the Other Side" and "Floating Grass". Wenders, on the other hand, jumps out of Ozu's subtlety and warmth, and by showing the destruction of Travis's life and life, he pushes this tragedy to a higher level of human exploration.
In addition, giving the actors a high degree of freedom, allowing the actors to bring into the role in combination with their own life experiences, allowing the actors to become the first protagonists beyond the script, is also inspired by Yasujiro Ozu. harry. dane. Based on an experience in his youth, Stanton played the complex emotions of embarrassment, remorse, and excitement when Travis met his son, whom he had not seen for many years. Natasha. Jane, played by Kinsky, only appears in the second half of the film, and the stunning look back at the strip club and the 8-minute free play in the chat room have become two classic moments in film history.
The images of "Paris, Texas" have both a highly documentary style and a poetic beauty. Wenders is very fond of photographing scenes for a very long time, truly recording objective things, and restoring the true state of the individual and the world. For example, at the beginning of the movie, a 5-minute long shot depicts the desert of southern Texas, in which only Travis is walking into the distance little by little, and tiny individuals are marching towards an unknowable fate, and a sense of sadness simply overflows the screen. In the scene where Jane and Travis talk across the wall, after Listening to Travis's narration, Jane pounces on the mirror, the two face each other, and the picture reflects the image of two faces overlapping, which greatly enhances the expressiveness of the film.
The street scenes, lights, people, and cars in the dark green picture appear repeatedly at the end of the movie, rendering people's loneliness to the fullest.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > written at the end</h1>
"Paris, Texas" as Wenders's masterpiece, from the day of its birth, there have been too many misreadings, some people for the poster on the beautiful female lead Natasha Kinsky, some people for the director Wim Wenders "king of road movies" name, after watching it is inevitable to be a little disappointed. If analyzed only from the perspective of storytelling, this movie does not have much to show.
Wenders deliberately weakened the story, focused on showing concern and care for the personal spiritual world, examined the root causes of anxiety in modern society, and strived to find a way out of people's predicament, which is the greatest value of "Paris, Texas".
Thanks for reading.