I kept mum and waited patiently for an agonising week with my nerves taut like strings on Hendrix’s electric guitar. Presently, I turned my AC down, switched off my mobile, closed the door shut- I have made absolutely sure that there are no distractions. So I am not thirsty or hungry, I have had something to eat. Under one last conscious breath, arms stretched like a warrior on the battle field with his stuttering machine gun, I am typing as if there is no end to it. I have seen ‘Paris, Texas’.
Movie opens with the protagonist caught up in the middle of a desert, no shadows to take refuge in; no oasis to grow expectancy for. No creature in the horizon, vision foggy, tears forming circles in his eyes as he looks heavenwards. But something is amiss in his demeanour; he is not a novice in the no man’s land. He is on a journey to the end of nowhere, is he running forward hoping to meet someone who can give him the answers that he is looking for? Is he running away from someone who has the answers that he does not want to listen to?
The movie is an allegorical tale alluding to something very profound. Protagonist has lost 4 years of his life wandering aimlessly in the deserts, he has silently repressed all his memories of past life and is immune to any inquiries of that life. Director very gradually pulls the viewers into the suburbs, into a house located on the hilltop from where the whole expanse of the buzzing city life can be seen. In the middle class family of the 80s, protagonist is shown decidedly permissive of an intrusion of life. He lets life come upon him-from his past four years, he finds himself awaken, but not so affirmatively yet. For he befriends his son, but is apprehensive about his stepping into a life redolent of past.
He shaves his beard, puts on neat trousers, polishes his boots and meets his wife in a brothel house. There we, the viewers find ourselves stopping short of stroking our chins, for now the mystery is revealed, and there is not much to be said? Here I think the movie illumines, it doesn’t progress any further, it merely expands into this bright light that blinds every eye that watches the movie, saddens every mind that has let itself into the movie, into the director’s perspicacious argument.
‘Paris, Texas’ is not a new concept, on the contrary, it is quite old. Kate Winslet’s ‘revolutionary road’ ends on a tragic note, this one ends on a purposeful loving embrace between the wife who prostituted herself and her son. Ed norton’s ‘painted veil’ ends with Norton dying under the firm realisation that his wife and he have had a fulfilling final memory-an acknowledgment of every wrong and right. ‘paris, texas’ is not tragic, it is not sad, it is not melancholic, I found it lovable. I loved the protagonist’s prostitute wife at the end, and for making that character lovable, I think the man behind the development of the character had to be someone incredibly clever.
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