Wim Wenders’ 1984 road movie gave Harry Dean Stanton his most substantial role, at least until Big Love. Ravaged, crease-cheeked and gaunt, Stanton plays Travis, a wandering mute discovered at the edge of the desert in the American Southwest. Slowly (maybe too slowly), we learn that Travis disappeared a few years ago. His wife took up sex work, while their young child, Hunter, ended up in L.A. with Travis’ brother (Dean Stockwell) and wife (Aurore Clement). Coming out of his mysterious traumatic state, Travis begins to bond with his son and embarks on a long journey by pickup truck to find Hunter’s mom, Jane (Nastassja Kinski, lovely in a blonde wig but saddled with a disconcerting Texas accent). The film is famously full of empty spaces and scattered neon-lighted motels—expressing German director Wenders’ nostalgia for the American West as experienced in John Ford Westerns. The best interludes are simply traveling shots as Travis and Hunter keep moving through Robby Müller’s gorgeous, fraught landscapes accompanied by Ry Cooder’s distinctive bottleneck-guitar score. The action (or inaction really) leads up to an exceptional set piece in which Travis finds Jane at her sex-chat club. She sits in a fake bedroom while he uses a phone to deliver his tortured monologue about what went wrong in their relationship. A piece of one-way glass separates them, and Wenders and Müller create a lot of tension just by the play of reflections on that symbolic barrier. Sam Shepard’s script sounds a bit clichéd and never clearly resolves the strange age difference—about 35 years—between Travis and Jane. Ultimately, it’s a familiar tale of alcohol, jealousy and regret. This classy Criterion box set features a booklet with critical essays, a gorgeous print and lots of interviews with the filmmakers and the actors, as well as deleted scenes. In a fascinating segment, Wenders explains how he pretty much winged it for the second half of the movie while Shepard went off to make a movie with Jessica Lange. Only through frenzied phone calls and Telex, was he able to get the Shepard to provide the finishing monologue.
