Review of Paterson (2016) by Glenn G — 29 Dec 2016

Throughout his career, Jim Jarmusch has made films best described as an acquired taste. With deliberate pacing, droll, deadpan humor, and zero interest in cutting away from a master shot unless it's absolutely necessary, his films made a lifelong fan out of me. HIs first movie, STRANGER THAN PARADISE, which was completely told in master shots, told the story of two men who willingly go to Cleveland in the dead of winter to visit a woman. What's not to love about that?!!

Now, with PATERSON, Jarmusch plays things straight, never going for an easy laugh, and the result is one of the best films of 2016. Told over the period of a week, the film follows a Paterson, New Jersey bus driver (Adam Driver) named Paterson. So, to keep score, Driver plays a driver named Paterson in Paterson. Jarmusch likes dualities in this film. Paterson lives in a simple house with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and their dog Marvin. Every week day, he wakes up, has a bowl of cereal, listens in on bus conversations, walks his dog, stops at a local bar for exactly one beer, comes home to his wife, and repeats it all over again the next day.

A quiet man, Paterson writes poetry in a notebook, and his words spill across the screen and we often hear him reciting them or working them out as he goes. The poems, deceptively simple works of beauty, reveal the deep wells in Paterson's soul, and Driver proves himself to be enormously soulful in the role. Never once does he betray his character by winking at the audience. Instead, he's a gentle, kind man with hidden reserves of pain. How he faces the hurt in others or the disappointment in his own life should serve as a lesson to us all. This is a film about grace. It's also about the soul of an artist. The joy, for Paterson, is in the creation, not the outcome. We live in a results-based culture, and PATERSON encourages us all to relax and enjoy the process.

It would be easy to categorize PATERSON as slow, repetitive, and almost completely lacking in conflict. There are many times in the film where I found myself talking back at the screen, worried that Paterson's actions would lead to something traumatic. Jarmusch, however, is so confident in his material, that he never uses drama for cheap effect. He's going for something deeper, more instructive. If only we could all be as supportive to our spouses. If only we could listen more or be compassionate to those we would normally fear. There's a scene, for example, where Paterson has a conversation with a group of guys who could easily be mistaken for gangbangers. My mind raced, thinking about where this could lead. The fact that it didn't go where I expected it to go made me sit up and respect Jarmusch's intentions.

Paterson seems to surround himself with people whose lives appear infinitely more complex than his own. His boss complains a lot, and there's a guy at the local pub who's heartbroken over being recently dumped by his girlfriend. Paterson's wife, while the epitome of kindness, has a lot of goals. She has a distinctive flair for decorating their house and her burgeoning cupcake business is probably the coolest use of graphics since my last visit to the Trina Turk store in Palm Springs. She's all about black and white, including the colors of a guitar she wants to purchase in order to pursue a career as a country singer. She's a bit all over the place, whereas Paterson remains sweet and supportive of her every step of the way.

How, you may ask, can a film be this good when it just seems so nice, nice, nice? Perhaps it's because it's so refreshing to see when so often the multiplexes offer up people behaving badly in addition to a non-stop pummeling of explosions. You just have to look a little harder for the conflict in PATERSON.

Jarmusch likes to keep the aesthetics of his films as simple as possible, yet a look at any of his frames reveals what I like to call a quiet aching. He's helped immeasurably by Frederick Elmes' gorgeous cinematography. Elmes has had one of the most incredible careers, with such titles as ERASERHEAD, THE RIVER'S EDGE, BLUE VELVET, THE ICE STORM, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, NIGHT ON EARTH, KINSEY, and this year's HBO masterpiece, THE NIGHT OF. He has bolstered the careers of some of the greatest filmmakers of all time and has done so without ever calling attention to his work. He's not a "look at me" type of cinematographer, but a "look with me" one instead. With PATERSON, he serves the material and more importantly, the character, making it feel like a shared experience.

So, if you have patience, an open mind, and a desire to connect with a story of simple pleasures, then PATERSON may just give you hope. Many keep talking about how we need a film like LA LA LAND right now. We need a film that makes us feel good, especially when 2017 has the potential to be such a shit storm. I would counter that we need a film like PATERSON even more. LA LA LAND may make you feel good, but PATERSON shows you how.