Paterson

It took us a while but we finally got around to seeing this movie, at home on DVD from our public library. As others have commented this is a very satisfying movie but difficult to explain why.

Adam Driver is really very authentic as Paterson, and he lives in Paterson, NJ. He is intelligent but quiet, every weekday he gets up a little after 6AM, eats his small bowl of Cheerios, and walks with his lunch to his job as a municipal bus driver. Golshifteh Farahani (of Iranian heritage) is his happy wife Laura who likes to decorate everything white and black, her home, her clothes, the curtains, even her cupcakes.

The story starts on a Monday morning and ends the next Monday morning. In between we see Paterson's daily life, his hidden passion is writing poetry in a little book he carries around with him. A punctual man he arrives to work early and sits in his bus, writing, until he is given the signal to start his route.

These are not your usual "Roses are red and violets are blue" type of poem, instead they are the thoughtful, non-rhyming sort, "Today I made my own sandwich, it gives me great pleasure to do so, I can let my wife sleep late" type of poem, although that is not one of them.

The movie is just a character study of a gentle and honest man just finding his own path through life, one week at a time. The script and situations also provide an appropriate amount of humor.

It takes ten minutes to get used too the slow pace and unorthodox nature of the film, then it becomes a warm bath on a cold winters day which you dont want to get out of.

The film shows us a week in the life of a couple living a seemingly happy and slightly bohemian lifestyle in Paterson, New Jersey. Adam Driver is a bus driver going also goes by the name of Paterson, who writes poetry every day, drawing inspiration from what at first seem mundane conversations on the bus he drives, and also from his lover, played by Golshifteh Fahani, who spends her days painting and making cupcakes. The poetry Adam Driver writes appear on screen in a soft font which is pleasant on the eye, as he reads them out to himself.

The whole film is routed in poetry, and is clearly made by people who love the art form, especially the poetry of William Carlos Williams, whose poems are quoted continually throughout the film. After a while it felt like the films itself was like beautiful poem that you wish would just go on and on. This wasn't only due to the poetic elements, but also down the softly spoken characters and dialogue, the beautifully shot streets and houses and ambling pace of the film. Nothing about this film feels rushed, but at the same time it lingers a lot but never outstays it welcome. The characters are utterly believable, the chemistry between Driver and Fahani tangible and delicate, as they wake up in bed together each morning, signifying a new day.

It drew me in very quickly, and after a short while i relaxed back and let the film cast its soft spell on me, leaving me with a warm fuzzy feeling for hours afterwards.

I'm not sure if Jim Jarmusch ("Only Lovers Left Alive") in Paterson wants to make America great again by giving us his vision of the way it used to be, or is telling us that we only have to look around us to discover that it's great right now. Performed by a brilliantly authentic Adam Driver ("Midnight Special"), Paterson is not only the name of the city in New Jersey known for its resident poet William Carlos Williams, but is also his name. He is a poet whose Haiku-like verses (actually written by Ron Padgett) are reminiscent of the city's own poet William Carlos Williams. He writes a new poem every day (or finishes an old one) on the #23 bus he drives before and during his trip. Though his loving, energetic, somewhat scattered wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani, "Finding Altamira") keeps asking him to make copies of them, he resists the idea, preferring to keep them in his secret notebook.

The film has little conflict, family dysfunction, or mental health issues. It is about what works and even (wonder of wonders) about a marriage that is not falling apart. Like most people with jobs and families, Paterson has a daily routine. There's too much variation in his day to call it a takeoff on Groundhog Day, but it does have that "same old, same old" quality. He awakes shortly after 6am, has a bowl of cereal that looks suspiciously like Cheerios, walks to his job driving the #23 bus through the streets of Paterson, listening in on conversations (often with a broad smile on his face) of passengers who talk about anything from Italian anarchists to boxer Hurricane Carter and comedian Lou Costello.

He comes home at six, corrects a leaning mailbox that moves daily thanks to his grumpy English bulldog Marvin (RIP), has dinner (some on the exotic side) talks with Laura who fills him in on the many projects she has going on including painting black and white circles on draperies, learning to play the guitar, and making cupcakes to sell at the local farmers market. He then takes Marvin for a walk and goes for a beer at the local pub where he chats with the owner Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley, "Carrie"), and often acts as a moderator between Everett (William Jackson Harper, "True Story"), a dramatic actor who desperately wants to reunite with his ex-wife Maria (Chasten Harmon.

The poems that Paterson reads as the words are flashed on the screen are not about odes to nightingales (though there's nothing wrong with that) but about down-to-earth things, such as one about matches, inspired by Ohio Blue Tip matchboxes that have disappeared from our lives. In "The Run," he says, "I go through trillions of molecules that move aside to make way for me while on both sides trillions more stay where they are. The windshield wiper blade starts to squeak. The rain has stopped. I stop. On the corner a boy in a yellow raincoat holding his mother's hand." In other poems he lets the world know how much he is in love with his wife, though he confides in us that he occasionally looks at other woman, something which as far as I know is still legal.

To Paterson, a poem should be simple and direct and he is moved by one such poem by a 9-year-old girl who recites it to him while she is waiting for her mother and sister. He complements her on her poem about a waterfall, remembering a few lines and reciting them to Laura when he gets home. Contrary to most films where, except for films about wealthy financial elites, work does not play a big role in the life of the characters, Paterson makes real what daily living is about for a majority of working people. The film has warmth and humor wrapped in a portrait of a city which has seen better days, a city in which Jarmusch creates a structure of closely observed small moments revealed with empathy.

Paterson is a man who is not looking for life to give him satisfaction but who brings satisfaction to it, a man who knows that satisfaction does not depend on accumulating things but in being grounded in who you are and what you can bring to the world. He comes to appreciate that poetry is not extraneous to life but that life itself is poetry. Although the film presents an idealistic picture of a city without visible slums, drugs, and crime which we know exists, Jarmusch may be providing us with a welcome counterpoint, showing us the way our cities should be and can be again.

I decided to watch this film because of two friends who claimed they did not understand what is happening and that they did not know how to watch a movie. I saw the and the answer is simple. In fact, the answer is in the movie itself!

If you are a fan of William Carlos Williams or a fan of Archibald McLeish (both poets), then the answer is throughout the film. Unlike many of today's films, this one celebrates the essence of a film by just being a film. McLeish offers an answer in his poem, "Ars Poetica" where he asserts a poem does not "mean," it simply is.

Williams also offers an answer in his works: there is an inherent value in the the "thingness of things" whether it is the bowl of plums reference in this film or in the red wheelbarrow.

What Jarmush has given us is an excellent example of what these two poets told us years ago: there is value in the small and simple things of life. That is all this film is about and we are told, point blank, at the end of the movie: the Japanese poet asks Paterson if he, too, is a poet. Paterson says, no; he is only a bus driver. The Japanese poet says, "This could be a poem by William Carlos Williams."

And, indeed, that is what we have just seen.

It's one week in the life of Paterson (Adam Driver). He's a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey. He lives with his wife Laura and their dog Marvin. She dreams of starting a cupcake business. Paterson observes his riders and writes poetry in his notebook. He spends his spare time at Doc's bar.

This is a Jim Jarmusch film through and through. It's silly to talk about plot since there is barely one. Adam Driver is putting together an interesting resume. There is so much behind the facade. He is not asked to do any big acting but he still delivers little moments. The cutest is Paterson forced to use a kiddie cell phone from a little girl after the bus breaks down. Mostly, the film leaves me waiting for something bigger to happen. Nothing ever does but the ride does provide interesting moments.