2016’s “Paterson”, written and directed by Jim Jarmusch.
Starring Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani, Barry Shabaka
Henley, Rizwan Manji, William Jackson Harper, and Chasten Harmon.
What is it about?
“Paterson” features Adam Driver as a laconic and mysterious bus
driver in present day Paterson, New Jersey. He has a girlfriend that he loves (and
adopted dog- that he doesn’t), and he likes to keep to his routine. Waking up
daily without an alarm, he goes to his work with no complaints. He listens to
his passengers and their various conversations, his girlfriend’s various
artistic schemes, and the various characters in their small neighbourhood, all
without judgment. But his absolutely favourite thing to do is write poetry, and
the majority of the movie is about the characters he meets on his journey, before
he gets to write about the things that inspire and move him.
Why is it worth seeing?
Jim Jarmusch typically likes to make quirky art house fare
that marches to a different beat, and here Driver marches to a metre- that of
the poetic variety, Jarmusch’s tribute to art for art’s sake.
Driver’s sole judgment, is that poetry runs through his
veins. Based off of the works of Ron Padgett, Driver’s regular breaks at the
town’s waterfalls to compose verse bring him joy, and it’s the soul of the
movie when Driver spends his time writing, accompanied by Jarmusch’s superimposed
imagery. At other times, Driver will run into people whom also compose, and he
loves it all the same- Jarmusch’s ode to verse.
It’s unfortunate that Jarmusch has to show so much of the
drudgery of the week (having a morning wake up shot of each day of the week),
and “Paterson” is the first movie that makes me feel like I’m clock watching
for when the day’s duties end. As well, Jarmusch here brings a tone that
suggests something awful is going to happen, and when something happens- it’s
pretty minimal. Jarmusch also brings something that Richard Linklater can also
suffer from, that of a Pollyanna hippie utopia where people wander aimlessly
from place to place, and no realities of racism, addiction, poverty, anger, or
even a lack of planning and action ever realistically intervene. On top of
that, you’d think a movie so heavily divested from reality would drag less, but
it can suffer from some serious navel gazing at times.
Despite it’s unrealistic depiction of urban living, a
running time that feels long, and too close to home workday grind sequences,
“Paterson” is an artistic shout out to embracing our inner artist. It would be
nice if it didn’t feel like the parking brake is still on.
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