Christian Holmes Paris, Texas

Travis' journey is an odd one. Marked by silence and mystery, his march through the wilderness and his encounter with his wife in the brothel paint a strange and secretive story. Throughout the film there are several themes that help compensate for the lack consistent dialogue. The one theme that I specifically want to focus on is how color was used to convey tone where dialogue did not.

There are two scenes in particular that we spent time watching in class that are really worth mentioning when it came to the use of color to express tone. First, the wilderness. Travis remains almost entirely silent during his time walking through the wilderness. However, the color of both the landscape and the color of what Travis is wearing helps the viewer to pick up on subtle tones and feelings that the director wants to convey. The wilderness is overwhelming brown, tan, and green. It is natural, base, and real. These colors help set an opening shot that conveys how the world ought to be, a natural and (although hot, dry and dangerous) desirable state. It is the place that Travis flees to and acts as his sacred place.

This natural color of the scene is then contrasted with the color and style of Travis' clothing. Where the scene is natural, organic, and fitting to its environment, Travis, wearing a red baseball cap and a suit with a yellow tie, contrasts the environment he is set in. Because of this, Travis stands out as an object of organic in the midst of the organic. This convey's to the viewer that although Travis is wandering in the wilderness, he does not belong there; that there is something holding him to the created world.

The second scene where color plays an interesting affect, is in the brother scenes where Travis interacts with his wife. The key color here is pink. The wife wears a pink shirt and the room that she is placed in is overwhelmingly pink. On top of that, the room is and the props in the scenes have a softer feel. There is less of an organic setting set my the color and texture as opposed to the scenes in the wilderness. What's more, is that the soft textures mixed with the pink reflects the femininity of the scene. During the long silences of the scene, the pink and texture mixed with the expression of Travis' wife communicates the sexuality of the brother, the feminine nature of their encounter, and also it helps to convey how fake the brothel and the acts performed there are. This falseness is contrasted with the reality of the natural scene that the movie is originally set in. Overall, color and texture was used through out "Paris, Texas" to communicate the tone of scenes that dialogue was not used to communicate.