Forty Years of Paris, Texas
Shaye F
Illustration by Alex U
An acclaimed German director and a Pulitzer prize winning American playwright walk into a bar. The bar is empty, save for the two writers workshopping their new script, and a couple sitting in a peeling booth towards the back. The man is far older than the woman across from him. He is dressed in a faded flannel button down and workman’s jeans, contrasted by her bright pink sweater that hangs loosely from her body. Blonde hair flows gently down just above her shoulders. His mustache hangs limp above his lips, which turn ever so slightly downwards in a frown. It’s difficult to decipher their conversation, but the woman gazes longingly at the door. The man doesn’t realize it yet, but she plans on leaving. Maybe not today, or even tomorrow, but she will. They have a son too, a young boy who is far too young to be without a parent. Soon, he will be without two.
My first experience with Paris, Texas was during COVID-19, when I had decided to take advantage of the isolation and spend my free time watching movies. My dad, who was quite the film buff during his younger years in the 1980s, never shied away from exposing me to what he personally considered classics. Whether it was genre staples like Alien and Blade Runner, or even cult films such as Repo Man and Re-Animator, I happily embraced these brand new experiences. It was his off-hand suggestion of Paris, Texas that would end up sticking with me. A far cry from the sci-fi action and practical gore effect charm of my previous endeavors, Paris, Texas tells a very different story, one that concerns itself with people: their relationships, their regrets, and their failures.
Paris, Texas is a subtle film; some may even call it slow. Picturesque shots of the American landscape are allowed to linger in all of their glory. The moody neon glow of rest stops and gas stations fly by in a cloud of dust as the setting becomes its own character in a way. The tragic story of Travis Henderson and his failed relationship with Jane doesn’t sound very significant on paper: an older man falls for a young, vulnerable woman, offering her a dream that she doesn’t realize she wants nothing to do with until it’s too late. The man is abusive, keeping her trapped in the house due to his own issues regarding insecurity and the entire gamut of toxic male masculinity rearing its ugly head. Although, the viewers don’t learn that yet. As the film opens, we just see a man in a tattered suit wandering the desert on his own.
He has lost everything he holds dear and now endlessly searches for some semblance of a dream he once had. That dream manifests itself in the form of a plot of land in Paris, Texas that he bought a long time ago, hoping that someday his family could settle down. He knows that it’s foolish to hold out hope for so long; their relationship was doomed from the start. Having a kid together, as much as they both loved him, wasn’t enough to fix things. Jane finally runs away for good, taking Hunter, their son, with her. She leaves him with Travis’s brother and disappears into thin air. After four long years, Travis is found by his brother and reunited with Hunter. Together, they try to locate Jane.
He finds out she has been working at a peepshow in Houston, Texas. Travis sees her through one way glass as she tries to begin her show, not knowing it’s him yet, but he can’t possibly stomach seeing the woman he loved dearly in this state. While upset initially at the prospect that she has gone home with strange men in order to make money, he is left with mixed feelings by the end. There she is, right in front of him, but she can’t see him or talk with him beyond a tinny speaker in her room. He finally confesses to her who he is, and by hearing her side of things from the past four years, it dawns on Travis that he hasn’t come to Houston to repair his family. Despite Jane’s wish to see him again, Travis is overwhelmed with regret for living a lie all this time. He tells Jane where she can find Hunter and leaves.
Travis had a chance to get back everything he lost, yet he chose not to. Jane was right in front of him, through a thin piece of glass, but she might as well have been in another world. He was a terrible husband, a neglectful father, and when the going got tough, he abandoned the world and wandered aimlessly for years. Jane suffered from postpartum depression after Hunter was born, and generally felt unsupported by Travis’s erratic pleas for attention. She was suffering right in front of Travis for years, but it took her leaving for him to realize what he did, and by now it was too late. Travis took his family for granted until they couldn’t possibly stay.
This film is a daunting portrayal of the deterioration of the American Dream and how it perhaps never even existed. We’ve all been sold a romanticized view of life, how we should strive for that perfect nuclear family living together on their own land in the vast unclaimed west. The endless backcountry roads and deserted plots seem to be begging for someone to come in and make it their home, so that they can have their happily ever after. But Travis doesn’t deserve a happy ending, despite how we learn to feel for him as a character and empathize with why he did those awful things.
As the movie draws to a close, he is left alone, standing in a dimly lit parking lot staring up at a hotel room where Jane has finally been reunited with Hunter. Everything Travis ever wanted in life is right there, fifteen stories up, but he knows he can’t have it. The film ends with Travis driving off to who knows where with the dark, glowing sky above him. Forty years later and Paris, Texas still hits like a gutpunch. Sometimes we can’t always get what we want, no matter how much we fight for it and convince ourselves that it is what we are owed.
