If you’re looking for the latest in manic car chases and wild explosions, well, Paterson (2017) won’t be to your taste.
But if you’re looking for something with an atypical plot, this may be to your taste.
If you’re looking for wild & wooly sex, well, Paterson will not satisfy.
But if you want to look in on a poet, this may be to your taste.
This is the examination of a week in the life of bus driver Paterson, his wife, Laura, and their English bulldog, Marvin, who tries to steal every scene. We see his bus driving, his poetry, his wife’s ambitions, and how he likes to spend his evenings.
And that’s it.
And I was fascinated.
There are typical plots, and there are atypical plots. Both are driven by a look into the unknown. It can be the visceral excitement of exploring a new planet; the intellectual excitement of the to and fro of opposing ideas; the very human back and forth tussle over some prize.
Or the simple exploration of how someone else lives. This film has high points, but they are not life, they are not death. There are accomplishments, but they remind us of the importance of community, from the bartender’s love for the pictures of those who have come from the city of Paterson, New Jersey, to Paterson taking a moment to make sure a young girl, momentarily alone, is kept company and safe until her mother returns from a task. It may sound mundane, but it’s a reminder to a society increasingly and tragically paranoid about violence (such as the extraordinary case of Jacob Wetterling) that withdrawing, treating everyone around us as potential predators, leads to an emptier and less safe, rather than more safe, existence.
The director, Jim Jarmusch, leisurely builds a background, marvelously detailed, that reflects the life of a couple, and the method of building brings those small, yet unusual and important events which can shape a life out in a bright relief. For those of us who have contemplated making a movie, there are a lot of implicit questions worthy of contemplation, even if you cannot answer them.
This isn’t a movie for everyone; as my Arts Editor and I discussed the movie while the credits rolled, I heard one guy, walking hurriedly out, say “THIS got 96% at Rotten Tomatoes?” Well, yes, it did, from the critics – but only 78% from the audience. But for me, just one facet has been to try to fit this into the evolutionary theory of story telling – what does this story bring to my life that makes me wiser about the future?
The answer is just about everything. The importance of community. A look into how someone else is working through this thing we call life. How they get along with each other. How to deal with threats, and yet love those that threaten. And how to express one’s thoughts on matters akin to these, in a language built on trite cliches? I have no idea if Jarmusch shares the same theory of story that I use, but I could see it. I could easily see it.
Or I could be so totally wrong.
Strongly Recommended.
