——The Boundless Exile of "Paris in Texas"
As one of the four masters of the new German film movement, Wim Wenders is committed to capturing the wanderings and alienation in human life. "Texas Paris" is his best road film, and it is also the representative of his "peak Americanization tendency" work. This is his ultimate exploration of the nature of human loneliness, and his answer is desolation.
This is a typical boring film, with a large amount of silence and awkward and awkward dialogue, accompanied by the background of the empty American desert and highway, which makes people drowsy. When the protagonist Travis gradually approached the camera from a distance in the desert, what we saw was the image of a tramp in ragged clothes, very ordinary, really ordinary, he and those on the street, under the bridge, There is not much difference between the homeless people you can always see at McDonald's in the middle of the night. People have always tended to care about subjects related to their lives, or those things that can bring happiness or anesthesia. If you can walk into a movie theater or turn on your computer to watch a good art movie, you might be able to live a good life. What does the story of "the homeless man" have to do with us?
I don’t want to know him, just like I don’t want to know the life of the wanderers who can be seen on the street. Although, each of them has their own twists and turns and even bizarre experiences, but I instinctively avoid knowing-don't want to waste time, more Don't want to be unhappy, those stories are destined to be full of misfortune, pain, confusion, despair and even madness. The human instinct of chasing superficial pleasure almost makes people want to give up watching this movie.
Fortunately, the name of the movie itself is a temptation riddle. How can Texas have a relationship with Paris is completely different. This question can support shaky attention.
Walk (Travis) and Stop (Walt)
This is a story about "wandering", as the protagonist Travis (Travis)'s name implies, he is a wanderer who can't find the end, just like Forrest Gump is always "running", in one sentence To sum up this story, Travis has been "traveling", from the winding south coast of Texas to the deserted Murvela Desert, from the singing and dancing streets of Los Angeles to the phone in Houston. In addition, the name is also a tribute to Scorsese's 1976 "Taxi Driver" by "quasi-fan-style director" Wim Wenders, in which the taxi driver played by Robert De Niro is also called Zavis.
As long as he is on the road, he will wear red clothes. He is a tireless Texas cowboy. He is looking for a clearing in the desert-Paris, Texas-this is the place where he was born. Abandon the past, forget the memories, just to return to where he started. He will not stop searching, as long as he is still alive for one day, even if he has a family and a wife and children, he will never be able to curb the urge to go on the road. It is a kind of primitive restlessness. Always on the road, keep moving forward, don’t stop, don’t look back, don’t miss, don’t be greedy, even if you die, you have to die on the road. Condensed on Zavis is the natural destiny of human beings on the road forever, born like floating grass, and from the moment it leaves the branch, it has begun a floating journey, not knowing where the soul will go.
At this point, Travis, Jane, and Hunter are trinity, just like Jews and Gypsies, their family is the representative of the "wanderer" group in the human group. In the use of color in the film, Wim Wenders has implicitly implied that they have the same fate. Among the characters large and small, only they wear red. Zavis appeared for the first time, wearing a shabby and dirty red baseball cap. In his home video, when he insisted on looking for Jane, he appeared in red. When Hunter decided to go on the road with his father to find his mother, he wore the same red shirt as his father. Except for Jane’s first appearance in the movie in Super 8 home videos, Jane also drove a red Chevrolet outside of the Houston Motor Bank. In the phone bar, she faced the audience head-on for the first time, wearing a bright rose red sweater.
Jane is one of the most commonly used female names in English, and it can even refer to girls in general. Its meaning is "God's Gift". Just as God created Eve as his partner in order to comfort Adam’s loneliness, this is God’s kindness. However, loneliness is a mantra for people to block each other. Even with each other, the feeling of loneliness is still lingering, even more lonely. "She is still young, what she desires." Because she couldn't satisfy her, Zavis became angry and finally pushed their relationship into a sickly abyss step by step. Unable to stand the suffocating love of Zavis, Jane wanted to escape in her dreams. In her dreams, she ran naked on the road, running towards the Red River. After running away and failing again and again, she finally did an irreparable and terrible thing-she set a fire and almost burned Zavis. This opened a gap between them that could no longer be filled. We mistakenly thought that Jane was a victim of wandering life, until when they met again in the telephone room where she worked, their faces were stacked on the glass. Like Chaves, Jane also yearned for freedom. They are one, just Like Adam and Eve, they are one. Freedom is a common desire for men and women.
The symbolic orientation of names in "Paris, Texas" is also reflected in his son Hunter (Hunter). Like his parents, he wears red clothes and makes many simulated driving actions. He is also a wandering human fate. The metaphor. Adam’s first job was a hunter, which was a heirloom career. It is conceivable that in order to hunt for prey or things like prey, Hunter will also embark on the road of wandering when he grows up. And unlike his father’s survival by stepping on the ground, he is full of interest in outer space. Not only does he have a glowing globe in his bedroom, but he also keeps his mouth open. He is already longing for "when a spaceship can be like a car". He symbolizes the wandering human beings. The next stop-conquer the universe.
Walking and stopping are two states of human destiny. Unlike the Travis family, the Walt family is the representative of stability. He married a beautiful wife, has a happy family and a stable job. He lives in the suburbs, but he works in the city, just like most Americans. Although his work keeps him busy, he doesn’t even have time to travel abroad. Other people do the same; he has a suburban villa he just bought, which makes their lives a little bit tight, but other Los Angelesers do too. Unlike his older brother Zavis who accidentally "drove the "highway", his life is all on the right track, keeping up with the wheels of the times.
However, as a man, he is also a cowboy in his bones. This is one of the deepest secrets in the film. If you remember, when Dr. Elmer in Tringua called him, Walter, who played for the first time, wore a yellow baseball cap with the words Stetson printed on it. Stetson is a kind of hat, especially the "cowboy's wide-brimmed hat". Unlike Zavis's "red", most of Walter's clothes are yellow. Yellow is the color of the earth, and also the color of the yellow light in traffic lights, representing stability and waiting. Note that it is a pause, not a stop. The essence of life is to boil continuously, as long as it exists for one day, there is only a temporary pause. Fortunately for Watt's own father and brother, he was the only one who found France (freedom), and he married a French wife of their dreams. The freedom that happened by chance in the worldly life offsets the eternal power of wandering buried in Walt's heart. At the fork of fate, Walter and some people have gained stability, while others will become eternal dream travelers. Just like the father who kept telling old jokes, he finally died in the car. We can guess that Zavis, who left again at the end of the film, is also likely to follow in his father's footsteps and die on the road in the never-ending pursuit.
Zavis always mentions his parents: on the way back to Los Angeles, when looking through the family album, this is not only because Zavis is a person who lives in the past, but also because he wants to find the past. His parents also constitute a repetition of the "Wandering" motif in "Texas Paris". Zavis not only has the same name as his father, but also lives his father's life. They are all looking for Paris (freedom), and they are all out of luck. His parents are the same existence as Adam and Eve, and Zavis' family history is a metaphor for the first family of mankind. The fate of Chavis and Walter is like the two sons of Adam and Eve, Cain and Seth. Cain was a man who was exiled by God and wandered on the earth. Seth eventually inherited Adam’s mantle and gained stable. This is the diversion of people.
"I'm not the only one doing this in the world." On the way back to Los Angeles, Walt told Zavis about his work as a billboard manufacturer. This is indeed the case. In addition to the vast and desolate American scenery, the most impressive thing in the movie is the beautiful billboards along the way. They are colorful, and together with all the other good things, they create a bizarre material world. But since there are people, there are both cowboys who pursue freedom and billboard makers who make life illusions in the crowd.
Cowboys and billboard makers are the original models of two kinds of life, constantly changing the appearance of existence in an infinite extension of time. The Asian hunters who cross the icy Bering Strait are cowboys, the cavemen are the billboard makers; Napoleon is the cowboy and Roosevelt is the billboard maker; the literary youth are the cowboys, and the civil servants are the billboard producers; travel is the cowboy and goes to work. It's the billboard maker; Sunday is the cowboy, Monday is the billboard maker... This is not a completely opposite existence. In most cases, they tend to be like U-shaped tubes at both ends, restraining each other in balance.
The only difference is that one of them lives in the external world, and the other pursues peace and purity in the depths of their hearts. One is satisfied with the uproar of production and self-deception, the other is sober in the wilderness. One is the goldfish in the Hunter’s aquarium, and the other is the seagull flying in the wind over the South Texas coast in Super 8 video. One can be fed by the world, and the other refuses to be fed by the world.
So the question is, are you a cowboy? Or a billboard maker?
Lightyear Dialogue
On the way to find Jane, Hunter sat behind the Thunderbird and talked to his father on the walkie-talkie through the window of the car. Hunter said to Zavis--
"If a person puts down his baby,
Travel for an hour at the speed of light,
When he comes back again,
He was only one hour old,
And his child is already an old man."
This is not only a metaphor about the destiny of separated families, but also a conversation about the origin of life on earth. I call it the "light-year conversation." When the family breaks up and the relatives are separated, for the 7-year-old Hunter's life, even if it is only four short years, it is already the most of a child's life. Just like the hearts of children facing the disintegration of their families, they will age rapidly, losing the carefree and naivety they should have. Home is the starting point of everything, and luck and misfortune radiate from it. The most painful thing is the separation of relatives. One second is one light-year. This is a distorted confession of Hunter's hidden mind. Although he was only three years old at the time, everything clearly left a looming mark in his heart.
When they said these words, the blue Thunderbird car they drove was like a lonely planet floating in the interstellar. The camera turned to the "non-stop" neon sign on the billboard, which was a reflection of the day and night of the river of time. sigh. The unfolding between the father and the son is not so much a chat about the conversion of the speed of light, as it is a discussion about the origin of life on earth-God placed man on the earth and left one light-year away, which is the ten thousand years of mankind. The man screaming on the bridge, he was like Edward Munch's "The Scream", giving out the hollow echo of modern people's distress and confusion: "In this valley abandoned by God, you will all be given out, and you will never turn back!" Human beings are not only lonely as individuals, but also fight against loneliness at all times as a whole-we are the orphans of the universe. Perhaps God has forgotten his outcast. In this lonely blue star, we wander alone, nowhere to put our souls that cannot be peaceful.
Before this conversation, the audience had realized that Hunter was an avid outer space fan. Not only was he wearing a silver space jacket and there was a luminous globe in the bedroom, but also before this conversation, he had been talking to Zavis. Explained the "Big Bang" knowledge. If primitive humans travel through mountains and rivers, measure the earth with their footsteps, hunt down the sun and prey; enter the industrial age, their fathers roam in cars, looking for freedom in their hearts; then the Hunter of the new century will become a new type of hunter in outer space. We will use technology to plug the wings of flying and travel to the galaxy and the universe.
Human history is a history of wandering.
We are drifting away all the time.
The triple tragedy of mankind: wandering, eternal loneliness, and the inability to love
Based on Chaves’ family history and tragic encounters, the film "Texas Paris" attempts to reveal the triple tragic fate shared by mankind: 1. Chaves’ self-exile, symbolizing the eternal wandering fate of mankind. 2. The separation and incomprehension between relatives show that loneliness is a punishment that people have nowhere to escape. 3. The love between Zavis and Jane implies the fate of human beings "love but not".
"Wandering" has always been Zavis's choice. Whether he suffered emotional breakdown or found that the past could not be overcome, he took the initiative to choose self-exile. He can choose other roads, but he still chooses to walk off the highway and walk into the wasteland on foot. Rather than mocking him for his abnormality, it is better to say that this is due to his nature. It is the red impulse that leads him to rush forward. This kind of primitive throbbing is exemplified in many historical records and literary works: Moses in Exodus led the Jews to separate the Red Sea by divine power; Pangonggu traveled across the oceans to search for the source of wisdom, the "sacred bottle"; pursuit; Protestants of faith took the Mayflower and crossed the stormy sea to the opposite shore of the Atlantic Ocean; Zangbano in "The Road" broke free from the iron chain with brute force; generations of people who risked their lives to cross the tiger's mouth in "Walking and Singing" Carrying the boat fool...
Our wandering is the eternal motif on this planet, as inescapable as love. They are like the various terrains in human history. There are basins and the sea. Where there is peace and contentment, there will be wandering. In other words, only when there is wandering, there is peace and contentment. It is human nature to yearn for freedom. When the aquatic plants here are no longer luxuriant and cannot satisfy the thirst, they must go on the road again and follow the aquatic plants. This is why Chavis in the film is always looking for water, and the motif of water also appears repeatedly: from finding water in the Gobi, to the No. 24 "poolside" of Nurse Bibos, and then to Decided to return to the "gulf" (gulf) on the sign at the intersection where Zhen had been broken. During the Big Bang, Hunter once said, "At that time, there was only water on the earth. Later, when volcanoes erupted under the sea, the lava cooled and then there was land." A stable agricultural society is the future. In the beginning, we were all nomads who lived by water and grass. Even after thousands of years of stable days have passed, the desire to wander is always buried deep in the bone marrow, just like after four years of wandering, Zavis will still drive because his "body remembers."
Different from the past desire to survive in search of water and food, the wandering of modern people, Chaivis, is due to spiritual thirst. With the emergence of Danny Hope's "Easy Rider", the film type "road movie" (road movie) first appeared in 1969, which was the most hesitating era of human spirit. After World War II, the faith collapsed and the cold stand was in full swing. The anti-Vietnam War wave was as strong as one wave. The youth of the whole world were angry and rebellious. The wandering spirit of hippies finally entered the film industry, prompting the emergence of "road movies". From the United States to France across the ocean, under the influence of Danny Hope, Wim Wenders established the same creative direction from the early 1970s, and Chavis is the purest in his film world. Wanderer.
Wandering is driven by nature, but also an opportunity to seek reconciliation with the world. Although, at the end, Zavis chose to start again, but if one day he really finds Paris in Texas and returns to the starting point of his birth (freedom is human nature), I believe he will return to stability again.
Accompanied by wandering is a sense of loneliness with nowhere to escape. Human loneliness is like a curse being cast. Everyone is trapped in their own container, unable to communicate with others truly. Another dimension in "Paris, Texas" is to present loneliness. Between people, even between relatives, there is an impenetrable barrier and incomprehension. Zavis finally found Jane, but they could only talk through the glass-he could see her face, she could only see herself. She could hear him, but she didn't know who he was. This phone booth is the best model of human loneliness. Even in the last candid moment, they all talk back to back, which is more like talking to themselves. "People are like a piece of glass separated from each other." This curse also exists between father and son. On the way to find Jane, Hunter in the rear compartment also spoke with Zavis back to back through the glass and talked on the walkie-talkie. And Zavis never answered his brother Walt's questions about his life.
It is a pessimistic and objective judgment that one person cannot fully understand another person, even a relative. Loneliness and alienation are the themes that Wim Wenders always cares about. He presents the eternal loneliness of people with the phone booth where Jane works in the film. People walk in here, looking for someone to talk to, but the other person can't see you. The girls exhibit youth and body, but they can't soothe men's loneliness, let alone their own loneliness. People can be sensually satisfied and can pretend to listen, but no one can cross that barrier and truly embrace each other.
Therefore, this is only a place where Zavis stays for a short time, just like marriage and family, if there is no understanding of the freedom brought, it is also a prison of suffocation. The two rooms where Chaves and Jane meet are called a hotel and a coffee shop. They are just a place for a short break, but not his end. The "hotel" is orange, and Jane strives to provide services of "lust" and "listening" in it. This is an allegory about the family. It's all superficial communication, not a real combination of soul and body. "Cafe" is even more a sign that Zavis accepts reality and is about to say goodbye.
Loneliness is lingering, and love is even more unavailable. Zavis loved Jane deeply at the last moment he left, and Jane also loved Zavis, but they were lost in the whirlpool of love together. People are looking for love, but love is a luxury. It requires a little luck and wisdom. Not everyone is lucky, and not everyone has the wisdom of balance before encountering love. Many people lose love before they learn to love. Love but not inability is the most sorrowful feeling of powerlessness. Zavis and Jane, who were lost in the Eros Forest, are already eager to escape after torturing each other endlessly. At the peak of mutual harm, they finally parted ways. This is not worthy of encouragement, but it is also a difficult question. Too many people in this world are facing the torture of the sphinx of love.
Paris, Texas, the vain start/end
For Zavis, Paris, Texas, is the beginning of his life and the end of his wandering. This goes back to the most questionable riddle in this movie. What exactly does Paris, Texas mean?
Paris Needless to say, the French are children of the earth, always in the turmoil of innovation and freedom. How does Texas exist in the United States? Undoubtedly, it is the most unique among many states in the United States. It originally belonged to Mexico and joined the United States as an independent country. It still loves to antagonize the federal government, which is comparable to a "state within a country." It has a sturdy folk style, is the most cowboy style state, and extremely conservative.
This formed the inner contradiction of the movie name "Paris, Texas". Texas represents wild cowboys, and Paris represents free modern people. Texas is on the right, with conservativeness as its mission. Paris is on the left and is synonymous with radicalism.
Paris, Texas, is an open space in the desert bought by Zavis through mail. It symbolizes the impulse of mankind to seek freedom in the desert of civilization.
This is the place where Zavis’s parents (Adam and Eve) had sex for the first time. It was the place where he started (the place where life originated); this is the place where Zavis wanted to go back, and it is also the fetters of modern people in civilization. I want to return to the desire of free nature. However, he is a scorched earth, and even more endless vain. Freedom is vain, and American freedom is vain. The shouter on the bridge, that "madman" has revealed Wim Wenders' religious view-man is the sender of God and exiled on earth. How can we talk about ultimate freedom? Through the glass (diaphragm) of the telescope, Zavis saw the Stars and Stripes flying in the sky, out of reach. After the mural of the Statue of Liberty, there is an erotic phone booth that hides dirt and grime. Doctors are blackmailers and policemen are criminals. The so-called American freedom is nothing but a spectacle. This is also in line with the cynical tone of the "road movie".
In Paris, Texas, where humans have landed, it is a scorched earth of vacancy, and people have been scattered and wandering everywhere. I am afraid that what you want to go back is only an empty space without supplements. Our starting point is false, and so is the end point.
The Rainbow of Life-Red-Yellow-Green-Black-White-Silver-Blue
"Dezhou Paris" in the shallow sense is a modern loneliness fable of "love but inability", and in the deep sense, it is a search for "human loneliness". Especially in the use of color, it can better reflect Wim Wenders' sublimation of the theme of loneliness.
Zavis is a human being, born wild and obsessed with wandering, he walks and walks, "until all the signs of all people disappear", but he has almost forgotten how to speak, but the colors in the film can declare itself——
Red-Bison. The force of life, it keeps people on the road.
Yellow-the earth, suspension and stability.
Black-scorched earth and ruins.
Green-the revival of vitality.
White-the pure state of life.
Blue-the ocean, the source of life.
Silver-outer space. The entire galaxy, the entire universe.
The color presentation in the second half of the film is a clever design of Wim Wenders, from red (looking for Jane)-black (the second phone booth meeting)-green (meridian hotel, mother and son reunion) appearing in sequence, simulating sky fire After starting a prairie fire, the life cycle of the tender green blades of grass drilled on the scorched earth. They meet again at the Meridian, which is a new beginning.
There is a saying in English, "Dust returns to dust, soil returns to soil". Chaves broke into the desert clinic in Tringua to find water. On a wooden pillar next to the refrigerator, there was a message board with a passage from the "Bible" written on it-the dust has come, you can stay and go through it或随便什么（The dust has come to stay. You may stay or pass through or whatever.）. We are from the dust, and we will return to the dust.
On the surface of the earth where the sky fire landed, there was a scorching white light covering the sky and the sun. Above that piece of scorched earth, a rainbow of life was rising, and life was born from then on, and love and desire became silent. This scorched earth is called Paris in Texas.
Zavis drove into the bloody frenzy for the last time. He can never stop wandering, probably because he was born like this because he was born in Paris, Texas. People on the road have no end, just like, as long as there is one day, human delusions have no end.
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