{"id":6761,"date":"2007-06-30T11:39:38","date_gmt":"2007-06-30T15:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=6761"},"modified":"2022-10-13T12:57:35","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T16:57:35","slug":"paris-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=6761","title":{"rendered":"The Look of Paris, Texas<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always been haunted by Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas<\/i><\/a>, not just the story of love lost, and yearning, but the quality of the art direction, the cinematography. There are no ‘sets’ – and while it appears that most of it is done with natural lighting, it does not have that bleached-out quality that so many realistic films have. It has a hyper-realism. A heightened sense of reality and beauty and desolation. It is NOT realism. Sidney Lumet did not “light” Dog Day Afternoon<\/i> in a traditional way. He used the available light, the actors aren’t wearing makeup, that’s real sweat pouring off of Cazale and Pacino. The look of the film makes it feel like a documentary which was quite deliberate.<\/p>\n

Paris, Texas<\/i> is not like that, although it has a very unprepossessing manner in and of itself. It is not in-your-face. Sunsets are beautiful, rain on a windshield is melancholy, but Paris, Texas<\/i> digs into these things, submerges itself in these prosaic things, into the colors, the textures, the LOOK, so that the landscape itself becomes poetic, evocative of something else – like images seen in a dream. Good dream or nightmare is unclear. Most of the movie takes place on the road, in crappy little motels, and convenience stores – which are most definitely not sets. It was filmed on location. I love that kind of “found object” movie-making – and so the location scout is to be congratulated. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it. Reality is often more vivid, and beautiful, and creepy, and transcendent than we can ever let ourselves believe in real life. That’s the beauty of movies, good ones. They can help us to see. To look.<\/p>\n

And so. Let’s look.<\/p>\n

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The look of Paris, Texas<\/i> reminds me of the look of some of Kwik Stop<\/a><\/i>. The landscape as HYPER reality, poetry seen in the mundane, the sets look “found”, not created by the filmmakers, they exist outside of the movie, in reality. However, they seem like poetic backdrops. A dreamspace entire. Life is sometimes bizarre, motels are sometimes absurd … down the rabbit hole. Yet they exist.<\/p>\n

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\nSame look and feel. Intense colors, dream-like, and yet not surreal. It looks hyper<\/i> real … the way reality feels like in a dream.<\/p>\n

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I’ve always been haunted by Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, not just the story of love lost, and yearning, but the quality of the art direction, the cinematography. There are no ‘sets’ – and while it appears that most of it … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[1389,1390],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6761"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181158,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6761\/revisions\/181158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}