‘Paris, Texas’: The Wim Wenders movie that woke Colin Farrell up to cinema
In the early part of his career, it looked as though Colin Farrell was destined to give performances in big-budget Hollywood features. After all, the early 2000s saw the Irish actor star in the likes of Minority Report, Daredevil, Alexander and Miami Vice, indicating his career direction.
However, it wasn’t long before Farrell began to give more critically-admired and emotionally nuanced performances in a number of smaller pictures. An excellent effort in Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges was followed by brilliant portrayals in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster and Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Farrell’s had his fair share of performances in both blockbuster movies and films of the more cerebral kind, then, and when he named his five favourite works of cinema in a feature with Rotten Tomatoes, he admitted that he had only enjoyed mostly big Hollywood features prior to experiencing the wonders of Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas.
“The whole feel of this film was something that woke me up to cinema in a way,” Farrell stated. “Before this film it was very much an Amblin world for me. Lots of Indiana Jones and John Hughes and Willy Wonka (the original) and Van Damme action movies and Richard Pryor comedies like Brewster’s Millions, etc.”
The actor continued: “Then a friend introduced me to Paris, Texas. The aching loneliness and sense of lost love that pervades the film from the arid desolation of the desert landscape to the haunting strings of Ry Cooder’s soundtrack just blew me away. Maybe I was 17 or 18 when I saw it, but it stayed with me, and I go back to it about once a year.”
Paris, Texas remains one of the greatest works of cinema of the 20th century. A fascinating and heartbreaking examination of loss, redemption and the difficulty of human connection, the film sees Harry Dean Stanton play Travis Henderson, a reclusive man who suddenly appears in the desert after a four-year absence.
Travis sets out to reunite with the family he once abandoned, including his son and wife (played by Hunter Carson and Nastassja Kinski, respectively), and Wenders delivers a truly beautiful film with a vast and desolate form of cinematography and a narrative that consistently pulls at the heartstrings.
Going on to express his love for Wenders’ film, Farrell noted, “It also has one of the most honest portrayals of the loss of love between a couple, and the inherent danger within the nature of obsession. This lost love is broken down for the audience in what, to me, is possibly most quietly powerful monologue ever delivered in any film I’ve seen.”
He added, “When Harry Dean Stanton’s character, Travis, finally sits with the woman he loved and lost, and he recounts their story to her. Travis has to turn the chair around, so he’s facing away from her while he speaks. I assume because it’s too much to look at her while he’s expressing where and how such love disintegrated. Yeah, it’s a beautiful, beautiful film.”
Check out the trailer for Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, below.
