Paris, Texas
Wenders, 1984 What is a road film? I used to believe it had something to do with travel visuals; after watching Wenders' Paris Texas , I now believe it has nothing to do with travel and everything to do with the investigation of stasis. Travel is only the most obvious way to conduct the inquiry. There are many movies that show lots of road images. I am thinking of films like Easy Rider, films that linger lovingly on bumpers, exult in the sound of big motors, and hope a jittery in-situ camera will emulate the shaky realities of life in the sedan. In general, these movies are low budget, boring, and bad, and almost never road films, au sense plus grand du terme . The real road film is casually, carefully, and obsessively indifferent to the road, allowing it to appear and disappear in its own space and with its own natural sense of timing. The road enters the Road Film like hope enters the heart: inexplicably, necessarily, a natural transformation. A good half of Paris...