Jarmusch is a poet of the ordinary.
Paterson
Grade: B+
Director: Jim Jarmusch (Ghost Dog, Broken Flowers)
Screenplay: Jarmusch
Cast: Adam Driver, Golshifteh Farahani
Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hr 58 min
by John DeSando
Although poetry has usually been the province of students, professors, and the well-to-do, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson changes that norm to give us a blue-collar bus driver, Paterson (Adam Driver), whose little book of poems is startlingly poignant with observations about daily life. Seven days mark the chapters of his week, where most of his days are the same. This minimalist film allows those of us not poets to see into the heart of a common man with a poet’s heart.
In Seinfeld fashion, nothing much happens until something happens to his hand-written collection, forcing him to confront life’s disappointments head-on and not through the fog of words and dreams. For most of the time Paterson relaxes with his pregnant girl friend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and their dyspeptic bulldog, Marvin. She fantasizes about being a country singer, in that similar wish motif as he. Well, driving a bus and making cupcakes are what they really do.
Such is Jarmusch’s charm—even the loftiest ambitions are tempered by the reality of small deeds and small conversation. Not that the film is devoid of other conflicts, for a couple at the local bar, Everett (William Jackson Harper) and Marie (Chasten Harmon), has continuing problems culminating in Everett’s over-the-top desperation. Paterson takes it in stride while he gets physically involved.
The days pass by, the actions are small, but the effects are as large as ordinary lives will allow. The loss of his poems, which he has not stored as modern technology would allow, provides a chance to show us his resilience. Even Paterson’s conversation with a 10 year-old girl who writes poems like his is the stuff of his life that may become source material. The material is rife with life.
Although character Paterson might remind you of John Lurie in Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, be not deceived. He is his own man and poet.
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
