A real film...
Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984) – This film does a lot of things right, even brilliantly, but they're all difficult to piece together into a global meaning or intention. Travis – the main character, the faux-amnesic quasi-mute wanderer – tells a few times a story about his dad who'd tell people his wife was from Paris, and then he'd pause for effect. That's pretty much the whole film: that story, the film's title, underlining that things are not what they appear to be (and it's pretty much how I feel about this film too: Paris is an empty lot on a photograph, it's neither exactly an origin – the story about being conceived there is most likely another fantasy from his father – nor exactly a destination, as nobody will ever get there / it's clearly a great and important idea, a metaphor or a symbol, something whirring with signifiance, but it just remains on the edge of undecipherableness, you feel you can read it, but you can't). Contrarily to that lot, the film is all but empty, it is filled with that type of ideas, quasi-metaphors or emblems. Here's a quasi-reading of some of them... The American man, Travis, starts up in the desert in wide empty spaces. He wears a baseball cap, has no memory of who he is and walks towards Paris – the only thing he seems to remember is that he comes from that place and longs to go back (this is all coming from an European director). He has no apparent language, and won't speak for a while – not until he gets to more urban settings, more clustered places – places where they make the billboards. He slowly evolves into a more normal being: found language, and finds his memories too, through film (he is a real asshole too, but I don't think it's part of the allegory). He then will take his son – who he has never cared for – on a road trip to his own origins. It's a mirrored journey back to Texas, but they sadly don't make it to the desert (I don't think the son's language was meant to be disappearing with that last scene with the mother, but that might have been a nice touch). The American woman (played by an European actress) is captive of fake tiny common places where she is objectified, bound to please the men who come to her, and where she can only look at herself. Now there's clearly a portrait of America in there, not a very flattering one, and the attentive spectator is constantly reading something in that tale. In that, the film can be enjoyed for the ride - and it remains a truly beautiful one. The contrast between the opened shots of Travis in Texas, and the confined spaces in which we find Jane, between the bleak moroseness of his world and her faked but astonishing beauty, is a wonder in itself. The mise en scène of the peepshow parlor scenes, their mannerism and the ultimate play with the reflections of the characters being one (again, almost readable) belongs with the grand masterpieces of filmmaking. I think the film achieves the impossible in being both very frustrating and extremely rewarding. 8/10
Wings of Desire is probably Wender's best film, but this one is my favourite. Everything about it just hits the spot, from the colour, the story of star-crossed lovers who still love one another but are just destructive together, right down to the title. While it meanders in parts and goes nowhere, which is why I have it at 8/10 despite my love for it, it casts a big spell, and I can never get it out of my mind.
I also remember that this movie is one of the first detailed review I ever wrote on this site. It was a jumbled mess without complete paragraphs, but at least I got better.
And crap...
Uncharted (Fleischer, 2022) – What can be said? It's treasure-hunting-intellectual-ninjas double-crossing each other, with terribly flat humor (too bad, I thought the line “little too old for prom” in the trailer was actually funny, but it didn't make it into the movie). I've never played the game, so I probably missed all of the interesting stuff. 2.5/10
If I am more familiar with the original game, which I only played for about 10 minutes because I have a XBox, and this was a Playstation exclusive, I probably would have hated it, since everyone said that it is nothing like its source material, and it changed all the characters. However, as a relative outsider with little to no knowledge of the lore, I actually had fun with it, and I thought it was a decent adventure movie. That said, I do recognize that it is just a mindless B-movie level work that somewhat entertained, so I have it around 5.25 to 5.5/10. It is a big "meh", but it did its job, so there is that.
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