The driving force of Wim Wenders’ stories thus far has, of course, been wandering but above all on encounters. Wandering persists in Paris, Texas, despite its somewhat chimerical end goal (indicated by the title), yet the film’s main theme is centred on a series of reunions. This new emphasis, from the point of view of the characters and their director, presents a major challenge. After all, the dialogue that can arise (through trial and error, sudden movement, informal complicity) – between, for example, a wayward journalist and a little girl (Alice in the Cities), a pair of men travelling along German borders (Kings of the Road), a mortally ill man and the gangster who tricks him (The American Friend), or a detective and the strangers he comes across in his investigation (Hammett) – was inevitably freer and easier to engage in than that of Paris, Texas. The latter encompasses an entire family saga and, as if to prove just how daunting it is, the viewer is left with a silent protagonist for a good half an hour.
Despite the weight of a lifetime of conflicts and past shared sorrows, the characters in Paris, Texas manage to find each other and eventually get to know one another. Walt, Travis’ brother, by sheer solicitude, obstinacy and affectionate outbursts, succeeds in breaking through the silence in which Travis has taken refuge. Travis, in turn, is able to overcome the hostility expressed by his son Hunter, and the love Hunter has developed for his adoptive parents (not without pain, nor without the parents’ heartbreaking support). Travis and Hunter, finally, set off together in search of Jane. To find her, they must surmount the impenetrable nature of a big city, the opacity of a oneway mirror, and the sediment of the past. These successive passages of reconciliation are overwhelming, to say the least, and after a quarter of an hour, the viewer of Paris, Texas is under its spell, unable to pull away from a crest of emotion where breathing deeply cannot prevent a lump developing in the throat or feeling the onset of tears in sync with the slow rhythm of the film…
From the very first shots (Travis in the desert), the camera assumes command of the landscape that has never, in my opinion, been so harmonious or expressive, even in Kings of the Road. And, as to time, a expansiveness of duration, punctuated by Ry Cooder’s guitar, makes Paris, Texas the calmest, purest motion picture Wenders has ever made.

Emmanuel Carrère, La Distance de la rencontre, “Positif ”, no. 283, September 1984