I want to talk about the first booth encounter in Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, when Travis goes to see Jane at the peep show where she works. I recently re-watched this movie and the way that this scene struck me – literally struck, I was viscerally suspended – was distinct and, for that reason alone, I want to talk about its mechanism of inducing desire.

You hear Jane’s voice before you see her. You watch him listening, head down, not looking at her. You can’t see her yet either, so neither of you are looking at her.

“Are you out there?” she asks, then says something about how she doesn’t want to talk either, how she wants to stay silent sometimes, too.

This not-seeing and not-saying are suddenly broken by the first visual we get of her in the booth. And this is where the effect of the scene on my body, the weakening of my critical faculties, the sense of being struck, and the beginning of my total visceral absorption in the film, begin.

The color scheme of the room she’s in coupled with her striking beauty are enough to loosen the grip of the narrative on your mind and encourage a different kind of investment in what’s happening. The pinks and the reds, her bright sweater that just happens to match her lips, the platinum blonde hair. The red phone, the dimly lit lamp, the curtain behind her pushed aside just barely. It’s all enticing, it pulls you in.

But there are lots of visually enticing and striking scenes in movies, and most of them don’t induce in me the full-body-level of absorption that this scene does. I think through color and sensitive cinematography, this scene manages to achieve something similar to what Gilles Deleuze says the paintings of Francis Bacon manage to achieve: the subordination of thought to clarifying (not desensitizing) sensation.

It might sound ordinary and obvious, but especially during an era where (1) cold rationalism either rules or ripples just beneath the surface of most situations, and (2) most of us experience a near-constant onslaught of visual representations, it’s not an easy thing to achieve in film (or in visual art in general) – but could be argued is one of the primary functions of art.

Gilles Deleuze talks about this in his book Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, where he defines philosophy as the creation of concepts. He thinks that artists think in terms of percepts (objects of perception) and affects (sensations instincts). The object of art is to create sensible aggregates of these percepts and affects, and the work of philosophers is to create corresponding concepts. Deleuze thinks that philosophy depends on art.

In elaborating on this idea, Deleuze asks: how does a painting by Bacon function? Primarily through rhythm and color, he says, and goes on to say how Bacon’s use of these devices activates the haptic, a method of sight which is tactile – haptic sight ‘touches’; his paintings bring about sight that can touch (two senses operating together: synesthesia). The domain of representation becomes renounced; Bacon’s paintings attain sensation directly. They offer life directly.

Bacon’s paintings locate and centralize sensation because they capture and contain a particular rhythm of color. As a result, the critical faculty of the mind, cerebrality, thought – all go out the window.

Just to be clear, I’m not comparing Bacon’s paintings (here, if you care) and this scene in Paris, Texas stylistically, but rather to make this point: that they use a similar method, and through that method capture and make visible the invisible forces that impact our bodies.

And with the Wenders scene, it’s all about desire. The scene oozes with desire, longing, loss. Wenders captures and aggregates the invisible forces of desire that impact us throughout our lives and presents them to us in such a way that the impact is felt deeply, acutely – all at once.

If you know of scenes in other films that manage to do this or something like it, please share. And just to conclusively clarify what I mean by “it”: when you find your capacity for critical discernment usurped by sense-images, becoming completely absorbed in the film by way of sense-experience.

(Also feel free to use this post to discuss your impression of his new film, Perfect Days, if you've seen it... I haven't yet but plan to soon!)