It will be in Italian cinemas from 4 November, as part of “Il Cinema Ritrovato at the cinema“, distribution project of Cineteca di Bologna, Paris, Texas, the iconic film by Wim Wenders. Here are the emotions of Valeria Di Tano.
I heard of this masterpiece for the first time Wim Wenders from the pages of Marco Rossari and his “In the Middle of the Night”and it was love at first sight. Today, forty years after its release and the Palme d’Or which decreed it best film at Cannes in 1984, I saw it at the cinema, in the original language. And it was everything: emotion, upheaval, love, bitterness, tension and peace. Thanks to the subject and the screenplay, by Wim Wenders and the magnetic Sam Shepardthe result of the incursions of Kit Carsonof the literary and spiritual affinity that must have spread on and around the set during the making of the film.
It goes without saying that the hand of Wenders it is a delicate and profound touch in the thoughts of its protagonists, in their feelings suffocated and rendered mute by pain and slowly left to blossom, like small fragile flowers in the Texas desert.
It goes without saying that the photography of this film (as of all the work of Wenders) is a tribute to beauty: the natural lines, the blurred colours, the dull grain of the sequences in which Travis reconnects with the meaning of life, of family and rediscovers himself, merge, being swallowed up by the brazenness of the colours, bright and fluorescent , of the peep show club. Everything becomes alive and altered like a story told in a loud and coarse voice, easy to interpret in the wrong way, in the most comfortable way: it is at this point that the most intense dialogues of the film take place, whispered on the telephone, behind glass, between a man and a woman who don’t even know how to look each other in the eyes. But they feel it.
My God, how they feel.
Paris, Texas it is a slow film, as is the journey that Travis takes on himself in four years of solitude and silence wandering in the void in search of nothing. On the other hand, when you have lost what you loved most, there is nothing else to desire, and, in this reality of abandonment and defeat, Travis is perfect: a hero who has failed, shaky and finally aware, who can forgive himself only to find the strength to love more, love harder and, ultimately, let go.
The comparison between Harry Dean Stanton e Nastassja Kinski (Travis and Jane) is a giant piece of cinema, a hymn to the power of word and image at the same time: every detail of their last exchange is impeccable. The transparent glass is nothing but a deception (it is a clear and impassable wall that makes them blind), the darkness becomes the only tool for looking at each other, keeping their backs to each other is the only way to feel truly close.
In the last twenty minutes of the film we talk about love, the perfect one that makes you happy. Yet, as Kinski’s eyes become huge and lost within Stanton’s words, we understand that love separates, sometimes.
Then it breaks, too.
Yet, he lives anyway.
“Every man has your voice.”
