Movie Review : Paterson (2016)
American director Jim Jarmusch is an acquired taste. While he delights certain audiences with his dry wit and existential realism, he puts others to sleep by denying action and swelling emotion. What he does is very precise and he’s the only one doing it. His film Paterson is one of the most unadulterated expression of Jim Jasmuschness I’ve ever seen. That’s why it was thoroughly ignored outside of film festivals and also why it needed to exist.
There are a lot of Patersons in Paterson. The main character Paterson (postmodern heartthrob Adam Driver) is a bus driver for the city of Paterson, New Jersey. Every day is the same to him. He drives people around, writes poetry in a notebook, comes home to his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), walks their dog to the bar, drinks one beer and walks back home. At their house, she paints everything in black and white, bakes cupcakes and learns guitar.
That’s about it. It’s VERY Jarmusch-y
The Creative Alchemy of Nobodies
Jim Jarmusch movies are peculiar animals. You don’t watch them to gain privileged access to high octane, world altering events, like you’d watch a Marvel movie. They’re not going to keep you on the edge of your seat. They’re not going to make you cry or burst out laughing. A film like Paterson is a reflection on the meaning of moments you never would’ve thought had any meaning in the first place. It’s almost like a form of mindfulness meditation.
The film is structured over a week, where Paterson going to work every day while cultivating a rich inner life he only shares with Laura. An inner life that is anchored around observing the beauty of objects. For example, the first poem he writes in the movie is called Love Poem and it’s about a brand of matchboxes. It’s about what it looks like, but also why it is in their house and potential romantic uses. It is anchored in the real and drifts into a world of possibilities.
I thought it was beautiful, how Paterson and Laura never let their rigid reality define who they are. That’s what is beautiful about artists in general: the juxtaposition of reality and inner live creates an alchemy that constantly alters both. None of what they do is financially viable: Paterson writes in a notebook he doesn’t show to anybody and Laura rarely leaves the house, but it makes the repetition and mundanity of adult life more magical and livable.
Paterson’s poems are real published poems, by the way. They were written by a mildly known poet named Ron Padgett who is still alive and well today. That type of transcendence really exists.
Art for art’s sake
So yeah, you might not get it if the prospect of living exactly the same life as everybody else doesn’t terrify you. Paterson is a movie about art. How it is conceptualized, created and, most important, why it exists. It doesn’t have to define you as a person. Paterson leaves the most boring life, which he seems wholeheartedly satisfied with and Laura constantly changes art forms. They’re creating art for art’s sake. To chronicle their existence in the world.
Paterson and Laura are also quite different. He’s straight and introverted and she’s a blooming flower of creativity. This serves a purpose in Jim Jarmusch’s concept: it proves a point that anyone can create art and there is no right or wrong way to do it. That it’s something personal that answers an inner need. Some of you might still not get it and it’s fine, but if you know, you know. Paterson is a film that speaks reassuringly to a devouring brand of anxieties.
Not much happens in it. Paterson and Laura are very much boring people by contemporary cinema standards. But they’re different. They’re unique and observing that uniqueness in the richness of its details is what makes Paterson worth watching. It has some of Jarmusch’s classic dry wit. There are scenes that are completely wacky (including a great bar scene), but it is first and foremost the introspection of a creator. A gorgeous one at that.
*
Once again: you might hate this movie for being wholeheartedly normal. I probably would have ten years ago. I would have called it emotionally monochromatic and unambitious and maybe it’s a little true. But it’s the point. The point is to be different. The point is to celebrate how perception of life creates art and how that art makes life worth living and I vibe with that. I really, really do. Paterson is a very theoretical movie, but is it quite powerful in its own way.
