Movie Review: Paterson

The complaint that ‘nothing much happens’ in Paterson isn’t inaccurate, but it is unfair.

No Transformers tumble into frame; no Suicide Squads are assembled; no Star Wars are had (though it does feature a progeny of the Skywalker clan).

However, Jim Jarmusch’s latest effort—about a bus driving poet in Paterson, New Jersey—achieves that which most fantastical blockbusters can merely dream of: it whisks audiences to another world.

Whether the life of Adam Driver’s Paterson (he shares a name with the city) feels familiar or not, his gentle movie is truly transporting. It’s worth living inside of for two hours. What else is cinema for?

True, plot is not abundant (which makes life easier for critics who rue having to summarise these things), yet plenty happens, and much is felt. Besides, the absence of inciting incidents will be a surprise only to those who’ve never submitted to Jarmusch’s inscrutable brain before.

We wake up with Paterson and his girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) on a Monday morning, where they begin their daily routine. He walks to work and proceeds to drive citizens around in a New Jersey Transit bus, all the while thinking up new poems, or refining older ones. On his lunch break, he visits the Passaic River’s Great Falls and jots down the compositions in a secret notebook.

After work, he returns to Laura, another dreamer, whose artistic expression extends to cooking, fashion, interior decoration and—if she can buy her a guitar—country music. His nights end at a nearby bar, where he continues to observe the other humans with whom he’s sharing the modest experience of life. We follow this pattern through to the following Monday, only realising how monumental this week was in Paterson’s history by the end of the seven-day stretch.

Paterson is an enigmatic protagonist; well-meaning and genuine, though never fully open to admitting what poetry means to him. (Laura wants him to publish—or at least photocopy—his notebook; Paterson ums and ahs.) He doesn’t resent being a bus driver, yet he bristles when reduced to that title— its common language to describe oneself by profession alone, unfortunately.

He finds joy in kindred spirits: Laura, who supports and inspires him; the barflies at his favourite haunt, who relish jazz, chess and drama; a girl (Sterling Jerins) he spies similarly tinkering in her secret notepad; a rapper (Method Man) rehearsing rhymes at a laundromat; and a Japanese poetry aficionado (Masatoshi Nagase) who unwittingly intrudes on Paterson’s preferred bench at the Falls.

Then, there are his passengers: shy bros who compare failed romantic encounters; would-be anarchists (Moonrise Kingdom’s Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman) on their way to school; elderly dears in matching red bomber jackets. Everyone has their passions and means of expression. Paterson’s mostly happy to be a witness, and so are we.

If there’s an antagonist, it’s Marvin, the British bulldog owned by Laura and barely abided by Paterson. He is as adorable as film villains get.

Legendary cinematographer and long-time Jarmusch collaborator Frederick Elmes is on hand to transport the audience to Paterson’s intimate world, decorated by Laura’s black-and-white works. Carter Logan weaves a similar spell with his musical contributions, which are disorienting at first and eventually soothing accompaniment to Driver’s poetic recitations (handily assisted with on-screen text).

It’s Driver and Farahani who enchant above all. Driver dials down his intensity, occasionally up-turning his resting hangdog frown to a megawatt smile. Farahani, with sweetness and sincerity, plays an ideal muse with plenty to say and express for herself. Not all artists live in the universe of Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals, or the upper-class abodes of Woody Allen’s bourgeois comedies. Here, Jarmusch says of artists (just as he suggested of vampires in Only Lovers Left Alive ): they walk among us.

4/5

In cinemas now. Paterson plays the Perth International Arts Festival from Jan 2 – 15. Rated M for mature themes and coarse language.

Photo: Amazon