The Look of Paris, Texas

The movie looks so good, but it’s not just pretty pictures, or arresting images with no purpose. The beauty in the landscape, the lighting, seeps into the feel of the film, and it has to do with the characters: their feelings of isolation, loneliness, smallness. There are so many scenes where a character is faced with a surreal image: the giant brontosaurus by the highway, the massive wall murals behind the brothel, even just the damn sky out there. All the elements of the landscape inform how the characters navigate their lives. This is true of most of us, as humans, even if we aren’t aware of it. It feels different to walk down the street in a small town in the Texas panhandle than it does to trip down the hills of San Francisco. It doesn’t just affect our senses, meaning: what we LOOK at is different; it affects us inside. Paris, Texas, without making a big deal about it, shows this. Landscape as character, identity, plot, motivation.


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And then of course:

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5 Responses to The Look of Paris, Texas

  1. Love it love it love it. I went to see No Country For Old Men last week and couldn’t help but think of the landscapes in this film.

  2. red says:

    I thought No Country for Old Men was filmed in a much more faded-out palate than Paris, TexasParis, Texas is all deep greens and blues and dark dark reds … No Country for Old Men looked like a photograph in an old dusty album – which was perfect, it goes along with the message that the old ones are dying out, a more helpless bleak look to it – To me it didn’t look at all like the lush surreal poetry of Paris, Texas – which made the world seem like a foreign and ultimately NEW place.

  3. red says:

    I talk about film here, among other things. I’m looking for folks to read me who want to do that, too. You want to engage, or no? I state my opinion. It differs from yours. Go read film sites to see how people talk. That’s what I’m looking for.

    It’s my opinion that No Country for Old Men does not look like Paris, Texas at all – due to the colors and the attitude and the way it was shot.

    The content dictated the form. In both cases.

    I don’t have much patience for your comments since the one you made on the post about my friend Wade. You so missed the point of that post, and had such a silly chip on your shoulder about it – that I’m not wacky about your presence here. I mean, whatever, you’re here – but I don’t really have a welcoming attitude towards you. Oh well. That’s the way it goes on the ‘net.

  4. Reno Sepulveda says:

    OK

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