2025 November 03 • Monday

Paris, Texas "is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made", according to Wikipedia. Alas, this is an opinion I do not share. Despite having a great cast and nice photography, it didn't do anything for me. I found it to be really boring and didn't even make it to the end.

It's a long movie, almost two and a half hours long. That's not always a problem but it felt very long to me. Way too long.

But one of the other things it has going for it is Ry Cooder's simple yet moving music, which is the 881st Soundtrack of the Week.

Cooder does a lot with just a very few notes. With some drony noises in the background, he'll draw out some tones with a slide on an acoustic guitar, letting them hang and then switching to some harp-like plucked notes.

This how the main theme goes, as well as, well, the rest of it. There are some slight variations but that's the general idea.

"Canción Mixteca" departs from this for the conventions of Mexican folk music and "No Safety Zone" has an eerie middle section that sounds like it might involve prepared piano and musique concrète.

There's a gesture in a direction of a more straightforward Americana sound in "Houston in Two Seconds" and "She's Leaving the Bank" but mostly it sticks to something like the establishing themes.

Despite being so spare and repeating itself so much, it's not boring at all. It has a hypnotic pull and a quiet intensity. Perhaps the movie has this for a lot of people, but not for me.

Fans of Loren Mazzacane Connors would like this record.

The track "I Knew These People" includes dialogue from the movie.