Jim Jarmusch’s magnificent Paterson is a film of unexplained eccentricities and patterns. Paterson itself is the name of the city in New Jersey, famous for a number of names that come up during the film – the boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter falsely convicted of murder decades ago, and Lou Costello, half of the comedy team Abbott and Costello. Paterson is the home of two major poets – Allen Ginsburg and William Carlos Williams, whose best known poem is also called “Paterson,” and like the film focusses on the dramatic Paterson Falls of the Passaic River in the center of town. Paterson is also the name of the lead character in the movie, played by Adam Driver. This Paterson drives a bus, which says “Paterson” in the destination sign above the front window.
Other things perplex. Four or five sets of twins appear in the film. There’s no particular story reason or anything else; they’re just there. Paterson the bus driver is married to Laura, played by an Iranian-born actor, Golshifteh Farahani. She loves black and white – she makes her own clothing in intricate patterns of black and white; she bakes cupcakes in black and white to sell at the farmers market; she and her husband go to a black and white movie one evening.
With all of these open-ended oddities in the film, it’s remarkable how settled and reassuring and contemplative it is. Jim Jarmusch divides the picture into eight chapters – for each day of the week, and then a second Monday to show that things continue. On the first Monday, as he does for the rest of the weekdays, Paterson the driver awakens between 6 and 7 in the morning, has some cheerios, takes his lunchbox and walks to the bus barn. He drives the bus; he listens to conversations, the time passes quickly and he returns home. The mailbox by the sidewalk is leaning, so he straightens it.
The patient rhythm never changes. Every evening, Paterson takes the couple’s bulldog, named Marvin, for a walk, and for a time leaves the dog outside a comfortable neighborhood bar. Paterson has a beer and has soft conversations with the bartender and a few friends. But this meditation on a life and a place is just that. It takes you out of your own life and fills you with a kind of soft, gentle wonder. Paterson is not one of America’s great tourist attractions, but I found myself wanting to go there, not to do anything in particular, not see any grand sights, but simply to be there.
The movie makes a real point not to be anything like what Hollywood does with films. Characters don’t sound the way you think they’ll sound. Everyone who talks is smart and informed. A couple of punkish young people on the bus have an earnest conversation about a famous Italian anarchist who lived in Paterson. You feel imminent danger a few times, but the threats turn out to be sweet. Some gang children drive up to Paterson on his nightly walk. Your movie experience kicks in – this is set up as a scary moment – but they’re sweet children who want to know about the dog. With one lovely exception, Paterson is soft-spoken, mild-mannered and exceptionally responsible. He’s kind.
And, because this city is the former home of great poets, there’s poetry in the film. Paterson the driver writes poems, which you hear him compose as he walks to and from work. And at the end of the film, he has a radiant conversation with a visiting poet from Japan.
Jim Jarmusch is one of our great filmmakers – Stranger than Paradise, Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai, Dead Man, Night on Earth, Only Lovers Left Alive. Paterson the movie is like a distillation of Jarmusch’s best films – it’s an elegant, moving passage, embodied in unpretentious imagery: a man driving a bus through an old, beat-up city that resonates with some of the best of human possibility.
