Paterson (2016)

Jack and I really liked this dreamy, visually beautiful, lightly plotted movie about a poet/bus driver played by Adam Driver, named Paterson who works in Paterson NJ, who recites poetry in his head while driving and writing it in a notebook when he's not. Driver's (last blogged for Silence) Paterson is a taciturn, sweet fellow, with a daily routine. The movie takes place over seven days. Each morning we see the day of the week hand written on the screen, and he wakes up next to his creative wife Laura (she spends her days in all manner of artistic pursuits), played by Golshifteh Farahani (goal-SHEEF-ta; she was in Body of Lies, though I failed to mention it). The poetry is also hand written on the screen in the same fine font. I found I had to move my eyes away from the words to take in the magnificent pictures. Several times each day Paterson walks Marvin, played by an English Bulldog named Nellie, who won the Palm Dog, yes, Dog, at Cannes for her role. She made all the noises and was a very good girl. Alas, she is no longer walking the earth. Apparently the director/writer Jim Jarmusch originally wanted a Jack Russell but the trainer convinced him an English Bulldog, THIS English Bulldog, would better fit the script and Jarmusch was happy with the casting.

At the bus depot each day, Paterson listens to his dispatcher (Rizwan Manji, a funny guy, is known to me for 22 episodes of Outsourced, five of Backstrom, and two of Mom) complain about his life, and each night he chats with the bartender, played by Barry Shabaka Henley (dozens of credits including The Terminal (2004) and The Big Year). There's a cameo by Method Man of Wu Tang Clan (most recently in Keanu) as a rapper in a laundromat, and by Kara Hayward and Jared Gilman (the leading kids from Moonrise Kingdom) talking on the bus about anarchy (part of that exchange is in the trailer). Another conversation by construction workers on the bus was one Jarmusch actually overheard somewhere.

I've been a fan of Jarmusch (his last picture was Only Lovers Left Alive and this year he made an Iggy Pop documentary--watch for the Iggy reference in the bar) for years. Jarmusch wrote the poem Water Falls and all the other original poems in the movie are by Ron Padgett. The movie was inspired by the William Carlos Williams long-form poem Paterson, which is the home town of Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and more.

Cinematographer Frederick Elmes (last blogged for A Late Quartet) provides the remarkable photography, aided by The Great Falls of the Passaic River in Paterson, in front of which the character Paterson eats lunch every day. Laura's fabulous wardrobe is attributed to Catherine George (also dressed characters in Reservation Road (2007), Choke, Life During Wartime, and Snowpiercer, among others) and her decor to production designer Mark Friedberg (The Ice Storm (1997), Runaway Bride (1999), Pollack (2000), Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Broken Flowers (2005), The Producers (2005), Across the Universe (2007), Darjeeling Limited (2007), Synecdoche, New York, State of Play, The Beaver, the mini-series Mildred Pierce, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Selma, just to name a few).

If you followed the link above to the trailer, you'll hear one track from the wonderful soundtrack. Sadly, I cannot find any other links online and I have searched doggedly. Jarmusch's musical trio Bad Rabbit has apparently been renamed SQÜRL and was credited for the music in Only Lovers Left Alive as well. I really liked all of the music in Paterson, including a song played on the jukebox in one of the scenes in the bar, and am hoping that the tracks will be released/revealed at some point. For my purposes while writing today, I opened Spotify and am listening to other tunes by SQÜRL.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics love this as we did, averaging 96%, while its audiences are a more tepid 76. No longer playing in our part of the world, the movie's showtimes in other places can be accessed on its site and its DVD release is set for April 4, 2017. We recommend it highly. After you see it, you may want to read two New Yorker articles, one only about this movie, and another, about Paterson and Neruda, about which I will write shortly.