
There’s also some low-burning comedy in the local bar where, each evening, Paterson ties Marvin outside and drops in for some conversation with the bartender, Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley), whose nickname is likely a nod to another doc, William Carlos Williams.
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It’s a minor complaint in a movie that is otherwise pretty flawless, which takes thinking, creating and beauty seriously but also includes a delectably funny, slow-building sight gag and plenty of shameless doggy reaction shots, courtesy of Marvin (Nellie, a scene stealer), the couple’s bulldog and Paterson’s nemesis. Jarmusch, whose work otherwise evades creaky norms. The female muse can be a nice racket, of course, but it’s a strangely old-fashioned his-and-her configuration for a director like Mr. She’s an appealing, lightly comic figure whose main job is to be Paterson’s helpmate - his chef, cheerleader and, of course, muse. He writes poems and reads deeply she bakes cupcakes (she’s a whiz with a pastry bag) and buys a guitar off YouTube, announcing her unlikely dream of becoming a country singer. Laura is the movie’s one minor letdown, partly because she seems more frivolous than Paterson, with pursuits that are more hobbies than they are brow-furrowing art. Paterson cocks an ear to listen to this human babble, bobbing in and out of its stream before heading over to the city’s magnificent Great Falls to eat lunch.Īt home, Paterson spends time with Laura, his stay-at-home partner (she shares her name with Petrarch’s love), who nurtures her passions mostly by adorning every surface - walls, curtains and even clothes - with patterns. Passengers come and go, embarking and disembarking and talking or kidding about this and that. Paterson’s work demands consistency, routine, punctuation and safety (no speedy action-flick escapades here), which create a kind of meditative flow. Jarmusch likes to take it nice and easy, and this movie is fairly low-key, even by his fairly chill standards. Patterns - including yards of circles, dancing squiggles and twinned images - fill “Paterson,” creating a vibrant visual punctuation to the otherwise relaxed storytelling. In “Paterson,” by contrast, the march of days announces both the regimentation of Paterson’s punch-clock obligations and the story’s structure, its pattern. Stanley Kubrick inserted days on title cards in “The Shining,” jumping from “Tuesday” to “Thursday,” a gap that suggests that something is amiss with time itself and that amps the unease. Dividing stories into units of time, into hours and days, is a familiar structuring device, sometimes used for suspense or to create a countdown. Like most people’s workweeks, his story opens on a Monday, that word stamped on the screen. It’s a quiet life, its rhythms determined by labor and the old Monday through Friday routine. Mostly, Paterson looks out through the bus’s windows, views that turn life into discretely framed images. Some of that world comes to him, clambering onboard in a blur of ages, hues and conversational interests. Every weekday, he rises early, kisses his beloved, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and heads off to work, where he turns the ignition on a big city bus and rumbles into the bright world. Its hero, Paterson, works in (where else?) Paterson. It’s as if he were beaming his heart-song straight from his head into yours.Ī movie about art, creation and how images become words (and vice versa), “Paterson” seems deceptively simple.
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Instead, the words - in a neat, cramped hand - appear onscreen as they are read aloud by their author, Paterson (Adam Driver), a soulful bus driver and basement poet.

No pen or pencil directly spells out these words, no clattering keyboard or banging typewriter.

Sometimes they appear over water, too, surfacing word by word on images of the Great Falls along the Passaic River in Paterson, N.J.

Poems slip across the screen like water in “Paterson,” Jim Jarmusch’s wonderful new dispatch from Jarmusch-land. Review: In Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Paterson,’ a Meditative Flow of Words Into Poetry Read Manohla Dargis’s NYTimes Review of “Paterson” William Carlos Williams Collection Image Guide William Carlos Williams Papers (YCAL MSS 116) See detailed desccriptions of the collections at the following links.

Jim Jarmusch’s new film, “Paterson” features poets William Carlos Willams and Ron Padgett, whose papers are in the Yale Collection of American Literature.
