Tempestuously creative minds like Jim Jarmusch have been, and most likely always will be, diamonds in the rough and tough world of independent filmmaking. While his varied body of work to date may not suit everyone’s taste, his latest effort feels like the culmination of all those past quirks, curiosities, and foibles, into a subtly eccentric depiction of an elevated normality in the life of an ordinary working class man.
That man, is Paterson (Adam Driver) – born and raise, incidentally, in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. A bus driver by trade, a poet by passion, and a man of few words by nature. Until he puts pen to paper, that is. Once that ink finds the surface of a baron page of his ‘secret notebook’, he becomes a modern-day William Carlos Williams – whom also hailed from the state of New Jersey, and proves to be a clear source of inspiration for our poetic everyman. In particularly his five-volume epic, titled – yep, you guessed it – Paterson, a copy of which, its namesake keeps on his desk.
“the sun still rises, and sets in the evening. There’s always another day”
Like many other writers, Paterson enjoys his time alone, but not in the sense that one of the tortured kind might. A trait which Jarmusch consummately establishes through the way in which both Paterson and his better half, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), choose to go about their everyday lives. To that end, at its heart, the film is a dynamic display of the relationship between two people who have chosen to live the way they please, and to embrace that ever invaluable quality which they both share, regardless of how it may differ to their own.
In the absence of a more conventional plot, each day in the week we spend with Paterson is occupied by a series of instances, occurrences, and chance meetings. The way Jarmusch so effortlessly weaves them into our man’s taciturn daily routine, like carefree comets in a meteor shower, affirms just how integral a part they play in the film’s seeming unpredictabilities.
Though its thanks chiefly, to Adam Driver’s loquaciously reserved yet immersive performance, that every minute is such an immense pleasure to spend as a fly on the walls of Paterson’s rhythmically everyday life, and thus also, a great shame when the time comes for the credits to roll. In turn, his presence makes the contemplative barrage of comical motifs, that may lay in wait around any corner, just that much more of a joy to behold.
The importance of poetry to Paterson, Laura, his casual acquaintances, and the film as a whole, is no secret. No matter how potent or aloof, it runs through the veins of all with whom he comes into contact. A befitting quality to possess, for a sheer, unrelenting work of visual artistry, from a man who is undoubtedly such an intimately perceptive poet of the silver screen, himself. This wonderfully wistful ode to the act of getting out of bed in the morning to face the day, whatever it may hold, is one of those films that really sticks with you, and all the better for it.
Rating: 9/10
Words by Alex Graham