For about four years, thirty-something Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) has been out of contact with everyone who knows him. Then he's found half dead on the edge of the Mojave Desert, and his L.A.-based brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), picks him up. Walt and wife Anne (Aurore Clément, who sounds like she could have come from another Paris) have been raising Travis's son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), now seven. Travis wants to reestablish a connection to Hunter as well as his own wife, Jane (Natassja Kinski), who had also disappeared around the same time and hasn't returned. Understandably, this desire worries Anne, who doesn't want to lose custody of Hunter, especially to someone who might abruptly abandon him again. It doesn't help that Travis remains tight-lipped about why he left in the first place.
In fact, for nearly the first half-hour, Travis doesn't say a word and barely appears to understand others' words. When he finally speaks, he sounds mostly lucid but childlike, with major memory deficits and little regard for food or sleep. I'd almost take him for autistic if I didn't know that nobody first develops autism late in life. For a while, I figured he must have had a stroke or head injury. Only near the end does he open up to anyone about what happened to him.
For all the scenery, we never actually see the title location except in a photo. Travis had bought a vacant lot in the desert of Paris (which doesn't have any desert in reality) for rather silly reasons. Evidently, he had been trying to walk all the way, but despite holding onto the photo, he makes no further effort to go there after being persuaded to come to Walt's home. The artistic significance has to do with the contrast in dignity between the best-known Paris and a backwater town. There's a theme of pretending that things are grander than they really are.
Unfortunately, I am aware of these explanations entirely because of Travis' dialogue/monologues late in the film. The director doesn't seem big on showing rather than telling or even spreading out exposition. You just have to wait for the mystery to unfold pretty much all at once, by which time, if you're like me, you've stopped expecting to find out. OK, I just told you to expect it, but you may still stop caring.
Don't get the wrong idea about the "all at once" part. The story keeps a very deliberate pace, particularly around Travis, no matter how much he has to say. It does rather help the overall credibility, tho I have to wonder how many seven-year-olds would take so much interest in Travis and his quest, dad or not.
Oh yeah: This is one of those R-rated movies with a surprisingly large amount of screen time for a little kid. You can bet Carson didn't watch the whole thing at the first opportunity. I'm not all that concerned about what little adult language and content there is; nor is any plot point a challenge to understand. Mainly I'd worry about a young viewer getting bored senseless.
I won't spoil the ending, but I sure hope we're not supposed to read it as Travis having done the right thing ultimately. It's another example of his irresponsible whims threatening his family's future without him seeming to realize it. We can only imagine what happens next.
Wenders has become one of those directors I respect but don't enjoy much. I doubt I'll see a third flick of his.
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