Paris, Texas

I grew up with films like Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves...

Nicolas Winding Refn crafted Drive as an intoxicating, neon-drenched fairy tale, but its stoic soul belongs entirely to the French cinematic tradition of the ultra-cool, ascetic criminal. Refn and star Ryan Gosling obsessively studied Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samouraï, borrowing Alain Delon's deadpan silence and the mythological code of an underworld phantom who speaks only when absolutely necessary. The film's deliberate, hypnotic pacing and fascination with solitary men navigating fatalistic systems is further reinforced by Melville's Le Cercle Rouge. By bathing the clinical detachment of the French New Wave era in a synth-pop, Los Angeles glow, Refn orchestrated a mesmerizing explosion of romantic brutality.

I was looking to find some inspiration about the road movie, and that was Jim Jarmusch, especially 'Stranger Than Paradise' and 'Down By Law.' And for the more melancholic, a little bit more reflective parts, there was Wim Wenders with 'Paris, Texas'.

There are movies like Paris, Texas that are like, profound, that shaped my sensibility and had a massive impact on me.

Barry Jenkins has cited Claire Denis's Beau Travail as a foundational influence, the film that showed him how to use the body, light, and music as primary storytelling tools rather than dialogue. Moonlight's fragmented structure, its use of color as emotion, its willingness to let silence carry meaning, these are lessons from Denis and Wong Kar-wai. Beau Travail is streaming on Criterion Channel and is one of the most beautiful films ever made.