Paris, Texas

Winner of the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Wim Wenders' 1984 road odyssey remains one of his most evocative and sublime films. Iconic character actor Harry Dean Stanton ably fills his first leading role as Travis Henderson, a wanderer who emerges from the desert not knowing who he is until his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), comes to claim him and take him back to Los Angeles, where Walt and his wife, Anne (Aurore Clément), have been caring for Travis' young son, Hunter (Hunter Carson). Nastassja Kinski plays Jane, the wife Travis is now determined to track down and reunite with the child they both left behind four years earlier in the wreckage of their relationship. Written by Sam Shepard (and adapted by L.M. Kit Carson), Paris, Texas is a gently directed piece with a powerful emotional undertow about alienation, jealousy, family, and redemption set against a mythic backdrop of the 20th-century American West. The spare dialogue suggests more than it explains, letting the performers fill in the blanks and the images frame the drama, while Ry Cooder's minimalist score is a masterpiece of haunting austerity, providing a perfect soundtrack for this moving journey to find one's self. Remastered from scratch for the Criterion “Director Approved” special edition, Paris, Texas features extensive DVD/Blu-ray extras, including audio commentary by Wenders, deleted scenes, an excerpt from the 1990 documentary “Motion and Emotion” about Wenders, an archival interview with Wenders from German TV, new video interviews with assistants Claire Denis and Allison Anders, seven minutes of Super 8 footage shot for the home movies sequence and an audio-only alternate version of Stanton's third act monologue in the film. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (S. Axmaker)