Waking up. Making coffee. Walking to work. Talking to coworkers. Coming home. Walking the dog. Going to the bar. Repeating it all again. These are the mundane activities Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson is made of. While they’re the things most of us do without much thought, and often with a little dread, in Paterson, they’re everything, they’re life and they’re beautiful.
This quiet sentimentality is because Jarmusch is showing us this world through the eyes of a peculiar man named Paterson (a subtle, wonderful Adam Driver), a bus-driving poet in Paterson, N.J., who favors William Carlos Williams, author of the epic poem Paterson. He lives with a beautiful woman, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and he goes about his life gently, often letting his poems take over his thoughts. As he walks through the brick-lined, industrial landscape of Paterson, we hear him working out a poem in his head. “We have plenty of matches in our house . . . we have plenty of matches in our house . . .” He writes it down when he can and expands from there.
This happens often, but instead of just audio, Jarmusch scribbles Paterson’s verses across the screen, daring us to really consider the words. This film isn’t some quirky gimmick about a blue collar fellow with an artist’s heart; it’s deeply sincere and lifelike.
Part of that is because Paterson’s world is full of characters – real-ish seeming people who come in and out of his life. He seems to delight in the randomness.
At home, he listens attentively to Laura, who is sometimes ridiculous, but endlessly supportive of him.
It’s at the corner bar where Paterson really comes to life, though. The bar is that sort of magical, perfect dive that’s homey and dark and pleasant and has jazz playing faintly in the background while patrons speak and drink quietly and play chess and just unwind.
The film has a somewhat meditative effect, which, I imagine for some, might also be a sedative on. That’s not a jab, but this is not a passive, turn your brain off time at the movies. And, if you let it, it might just be one that leaves you reconsidering whatever awaits you after the film, whether it’s taking out the garbage, shoveling the driveway or whatever unsung banalities your future holds.