A David Lynch movie David Lynch never made

“Okay, one thing you must remember, to be a rich father, Señor Travis, you must look to the sky and never at the ground.”

I’ve always looked at Paris, Texas as a David Lynch movie that David Lynch never made. Not to say that the film and Wim Wenders’ approach doesn’t stand out on its own, it most certainly does, with elements of his previous German-film, Alice in the Cities, working its way into this, but that is the vibe I have always gotten since the first day I put this film on to watch, which was a really special viewing because I still do treat this film with so much sentimentality, more so than some of my other so-called favorite films. Maybe its the inclusion of both Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell, the rural America landscapes and small-town aesthetic, or the guy on the bridge yelling about there being no “safety zones”, whether it be all three of these combined should be enough to suffice as to why I make such a declaration, and why this film just absorbs me into its world every time I’ve put it on. It’s more than just the deeply moving character study that unfolds and unfolds and unfolds, which Harry Dean Stanton plays to perfection. What I find most fascinating about Paris, Texas is Wim Winder’s painting of America - a painting painted by an outsider from Germany, and yet, its one of the more nostalgic and sentimental films and depictions of America I have ever seen, and sometimes it really is the spectators from afar who see a deeper realized truth that the players on the field can’t seem to see.