Paterson: All the world’s a stage (maybe not for “us”)

Jim Jarmusch’s “Paterson” is a movie about everyday virtue where nothing really happens, but the movie isn’t remotely about Nothingness. This is a movie about poetry hidden in everyday mundane habits. But “Paterson” doesn’t feel the need to romanticize it as a struggle or downplay work as just a “day job.” In “Paterson” job and art all work in tandem. The movie takes us to a small town in New Jersey and it’s about a week in the life of a Paterson bus driver (Adam Driver) also named Paterson, who writes poems in his private notebook, who lives and breathes in solitude of the town Paterson, and who loves Paterson, a public book of poems by William Carlos Williams. 

Paterson is a poet, an artist, but the story isn’t a typical bildungsroman saga. It breaks every possible stereotype associated with the character of a solitary artist. He is a working-class artist, who has a day job to earn his bread, but we never see any rage or grief in his expression, neither we see him struggle for a better financial or social status. Every day he takes his girlfriend’s pet dog to a walk and sit in a bar, taking small sips of his drink. But neither he is painted as a drunkard nor there in any indication that he is drinking alcohol to escape the real life. Jarmusch is generous about his vision of an America where any stranger has the capability to flourish as a poet. It's a vision and a hope for the world that is precious, rare—who am I to kill it? Jarmusch makes us question our idea of a poet or rather an artist. Can we consider someone who diligently scribbles around words but keeps it away from the public eye, a poet? Jarmusch makes Paterson interact with a few people, some artists and some non-artists, showing us how an apparently regular bus driver fits none of those type of personality types- acknowledging how different he is.

The movie is about the poetry of habit. And Jarmusch repeats similar frames, chores, habit, dialogues to show us and in instances breaks it in an order to exaggerate the affect. We see Paterson following the similar routine everyday- he wakes up by the side of his wife, kisses her, sits on the bed for a moment, grabs his clothes, eats his cereals, walks to the bus station, writes a line or two in his notebook as people board in the bus, sits facing a waterfall while his way back home with his copy of Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems” beside his lunchbox - in the same simple rhythm of work and home. But most importantly like every true poet he neatly and carefully observes the world around him. The movie is also about the poetry of patterns. It doesn’t follow any screenwriting rules and doesn’t have any clear premise, conflict, and resolution. Rather it is made in seven episodes that are virtual stanzas, each for a day of the week. The visual pattern is distinctly cinematic and metaphorical as we see the couple wishing twin children in future and Paterson encountering a new set of twins every day of the week. This can be a visual representation of a duality of Paterson’s personality- of a daily wager and of an artist.

What abounds are moments and memories that are being constantly thought up and forgotten at the same time: a 12-year-old girl writes a poem about “waterfalls”. Paterson and his crazy-ambitious, country-music-loving, cupcake-baking girlfriend Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) spend a night at a musky cinema where they still play old black-and-white films from the 1930s. We see Paterson’s character juxtaposed against these two people who are artists on their own right, and maybe the manifestation of their exuberant artistic persona is more prominent and conventional than Paterson’s. Paterson’s artistic persona is quite and detached while Laura bursts with creativity and he is always in verge of picking up a new hobby. She appreciates and encourages his writing persuading him to make a copy of his wonderful poems, the only copy of which he keeps in his “secret notebook”. Their diametrically polar opposite personalities serve as whatever little conflict is there in the movie, but the conflict never seems large or uncomfortable enough to burst and it never bursts which is perfectly fitting for a slowpaced anti-drama like “Paterson”. In Paterson’s mundane and solitary existence, Laura breathes as an embodiment disorder and whimsicality; her idiosyncrasies and caprices, serves as a foil to Paterson. It stimulates his creativity as Laura serves as a muse in some of his poems. We see Paterson bumping into a teenage girl who proclaims she is a poet and enthusiastically reads her poem to Paterson. We never see Paterson proclaiming himself to be a poet. Even towards the end when a Japanese poet asks him whether he writes poetry, he says that he is just a bus driver. The movie doesn’t spell out any clear reason why Paterson subdues and undermines his artistic identity. For Paterson, writing poetry is just another habit, it is a cathartic process of channel his creativity into words. Maybe he writes only for himself, or maybe he is just overwhelmed by the popular image of how an artist should be and doesn’t relate to it. The class difference between the girl and Paterson is evident, so it can also be argued that her elite background enables her to be confident enough to think herself as poet, whereas Paterson hesitates because he never saw another bus driver as a poet. Or maybe it’s just because the girl is young and it’s all her juvenile innocence. Paterson never lived his life in the American Dream way, rather he seems disturbed by the capitalist world, and maintains a careful distance from it. We see him being very detached from his own work, as he promptly surrenders every time, he is interrupted by someone while he is writing as if he was just waiting for an excuse to distance himself from the creative process. He encounters the counterlives. His colleague endlessly complains all his little inconveniences to live, while Paterson always replies that he is okay. He is neither too happy nor too sad with the world, he is living it as it is with a mark of quiet dignity. Also, there is a person at the bar who tries to kill himself because of an unrequited love blowing the incident out of proportion as if it was a Shakespearean Tragedy: “Without love, what reason is there for anything?” Paterson finds solace in his dull job, carrying out the same duty without complaining day after day and is amused by the pleasure in repeated viewing of the cityscape of his route. Poetry is imbued in modesty.

“Paterson” treats poetry as it should be- a habit of life as natural as breathing. There is no grand narrative in the movie, neither Paterson is destined to achieve some bigger fame. Paterson’s life isn’t miserable, poetry is just an opportunity for him to be occupied. “Paterson” is a movie about getting away from self-centeredness and let life happen, so that you can notice, absorb and devour the little intricacies of being alive- something which is essential to creativity. “Paterson” is a homage to the working-class men who are keeping the artist alive in themselves against all odds, while acknowledging the existence of people around us, being completely aware of the fact that the world is not a stage for them to flaunt their art- rather art is their weapon to be alive and thriving. The movie “Paterson” thus encapsulates Paterson’s favorite poet William Carlos Williams’s philosophy written in the book Paterson: “To make a start, out of particulars and make them general”.