Review Summary: At the first glance, “Paris, Texas” appears (like a lot of Ry Cooder records) to be a one dimensional affair, but upon closer inspection eventually settles into being one of films most interesting and evocative soundtracks ever released.
In 1984 director Wim Wenders was caught by Ryland Cooder’s talents on the guitar and approached him for the scoring of the film Paris, Texas. The town of Paris, surrounded by half-parched low-scrubland, white-chalky rock and a sense of isolation with its endless railroad lines leading to possibilities of success or failure seemed easy for Cooder to emulate. By choosing one of his major influences (
Blind Willie Johnson’s
“Dark Was the Night”) to form the body of the work, he captures the emotional decay between a missing father, his former wife/lover, and his son, while also forming a sense of musical weather to the films clever use of landscape cinematography. The effect is a desolate blend of abrasive bottleneck work, echoic harmony and highly suggestive weeping melodies. Sometimes bland, other times layered; it’s hard to depict where some of these start, let alone end, as they are seemingly improvisational, especially during moments of avant-garde-like tones.
Before reaching the port of experimentation, he initiates the setting of the film amazingly with
“Paris, Texas” and
“Brothers”, formed upon solid, yet of course sliding acoustic terrain. Less subtle is the more tentative in temperament
“Nothing Out There”, entitled as such to remind the audience later on about the landscape and its place as a secondary character in the film. Additionally, he picks apart this same
character later on in most of the other tracks, allowing for experimentation to occur, such as in
“Canción Mixteca” which witnesses the inclusion of main actor Harry Dean Stanton vocalising eight lines of pure emotional nostalgia in Spanish, accompanied with Cooder picking gently on the strings.
Later, after toying with the main theme’s doldrums, Cooder’s music is ceased in
“I Knew These People”, replaced entirely by a sequence of dialogue between two main characters. The conversation is haunting for its matter-of-fact position amongst pauses of awkward silence. Cooder effortlessly fills these holes after some time by fading in, which by itself is a powerful moment for both the film and the music.
“Dark Was the Night” resolves this melancholy, but not as you’d think, using the same original theme, only more convincingly.
While it’s easier to remember this work for its apparent lack of depth and repetitiveness, one must also remember that the experience should be forged under the influence of the music itself a sense of cognitive landscape development; let the music paint the picture for you. It has enough moments to be enjoy as a work of its own, without the movies scenery to accompany it, but still does owe some of its effectiveness to the fact that it’s best enjoyed in the home setting.
