Paterson is a city in New Jersey, USA. The population is 146,199 people. Among the attractions are Great Falls Waterfall and Lambert Castle Museum. The cradle of the American Industrial Revolution: in 1832, Thomas Rogers opened a factory here, which later became the largest manufacturer of locomotives; in 1835, Samuel Colt organized the production of revolvers, which were called the Colt Paterson; in the 1880s, Paterson became a major center of the silk industry in the United States and even received the nickname “Silk City”.
But this is not the city we see in the Jim Jarmusch movie. Jarmusch’s Paterson is a provincial, quiet, forgotten town where people are more important than industry, where everyone is familiar and friends, where everyone is a bit of a philosopher, where poetry can be born in a laundry room, and a poet can be a pediatrician or a bus driver. A master of the image of one-story America, Jarmusch creates an image of a city without pathos, helicopter panoramas and special effects, and through touching, naive, causing a good smile the quirks of residents. No wonder the audience of the Cannes festival called the film almost a breath of fresh air after oxygen starvation.
The main character, whose name is Paterson, is a bus driver (actor Adam Driver actually drove a bus on the set, for this he had to get a license of the appropriate category). In his spare time he writes poetry and meets poets everywhere - this is the charm of the city, native to the poet-beater Allen Ginsberg and the poet William Carlos Williams, author of an epic poem about the city of Paterson. American poets have a great influence not only on the protagonist - Jarmusch devotes the whole film to the New York Poetry School and himself admits that David Shapiro's Anthology of New York Poetry at one time was something like a Bible for him.
“I’m more interested in making a film about a man walking a dog than a Chinese emperor,” Jarmusch once said. He said and made a film about a dog, a charming bulldog named Marvin, and about a poet-driver who can be inspired by a box of matches to think about love, and about inspiration found among simple joys. He made a film about a measured, monotonous life - but in it, amid the boredom of daily worries, eternal beauty flickers.
Like his favorite poet Williams, the main character creates poetic sketches, everyday masterpieces, real prose of modern life and dedicates her to her beloved Laura, who, with her ability to enjoy small things and always burn with some idea, whether it is baking cupcakes or the desire to become a country singer, charges her husband with life.
The film looks very holistic, as if it was not edited at all. This is the merit of a long preparation: Jarmusch wrote more than 20 interpretations of the plot, music for the picture and even one poem - a poem that is composed by a little girl, belongs to the pen of the director, and the rest of the poems for the film were specially written by Jarmusch's favorite poet Ron Paget.
The picture with a rare charm reveals household mysteries: what men think about meetings with women, what it means to realize a dream or, for example, why the mailbox constantly falls. Despite the small number of jokes, at some point you notice that you almost never stop smiling while watching. That's Jarmusch's philosophy: life in its simplicity and naivety is so funny, it doesn't need any other decorations.
Paterson is a piece product unsuitable for the mass audience. It must be absorbed, not swallowed. But for those who know how to appreciate the light charm of everyday life, it will become a pleasure both aesthetically and intellectually. Each frame rhymes with the previous one; each character is a twin; each image can be decomposed into yin and yang; each dialogue is symmetrical. Poetry in its purest form." (c) : 👍
