With his outsider’s view of America, Wim Wenders’ haunting tale of loss, redemption and the ties that bind is rightly regarded as one of the artistic triumphs of contemporary world cinema. This beautiful, unusual road movie follows Travis, world-weary and lost in his own private hell as he attempts to put back together the pieces of his life. Presumed dead for four years, he reappears from the desert on the Mexican border and, reunited with his seven-year-old son, sets out to find his wife who abandoned them both. Wender’s stark imagery of sun bleached landscapes and melanchonic undertones, combined with an incredible slide guitar soundtrack from Ry Cooder, conjures up a question. Has image and sound in cinema ever been so ideally suited?

Gerard elaborates:

“I came to Ry Cooder when I was a little boy through the films of Walter Hill (particularly Southern Comfort) but it was the soundtrack to Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas that blew me away. My brother Eugene and I used to listen to this on his little car stereo system driving around the Suffolk countryside, imagining we were in the vast open spaces of the film itself. It is still one of, if not the, best soundtracks ever made. The way the sparseness of Ry Cooder’s score resonated is an object lesson in matching images and sound. Apparently Cooder wrote and recorded much of this score whilst improvising and watching scenes from the film for the first time.”

Gerard and Matt Johnson will be in conversation with our cinema curator Mark Cosgrove on Sun 8 March, discussing their work, their influences and their recent collaboration on Hyena, which opens on Fri 6 March.

Tickets: £5.50 full / £4.00 concessions and get £1.00 off all meal orders £7.00 or over in the Café/Bar on the same day with your ticket. See our full range of menus here.

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