Pater­son – first look review

The hum­ble bus dri­ver is afford­ed the rare oppor­tu­ni­ty of deep, exhaus­tive obser­va­tion cour­tesy of Jim Jar­musch. He glances upon the imme­di­ate envi­rons of his famil­iar route and drinks in the colour and detail which he will store for lat­er use – per­haps chan­nelling his sight­ings into a quick poem?

Pater­son is the name of one such civic clock-punch­er, played here by Adam Dri­ver in full-on droopy hug-me mode. By coin­ci­dence, he was born and raised in the city of Pater­son, New Jer­sey, where he now lives in a cot­tage with his over­ac­tive girl­friend Lau­ra (Gol­shifteh Fara­hani) and his obe­di­ent yet strange­ly sin­is­ter Eng­lish bull­dog, Mar­vin. The film charts sev­en days and a morn­ing of his life. It observes the observer.

Pater­son is less an ode to cre­ativ­i­ty and more about look­ing at the phys­i­cal minu­ti­ae of how we absorb influ­ences through the sens­es. The film offers a note of cau­tion, too, sug­gest­ing that we should be selec­tive about the peo­ple, objects and feel­ings that deserve artis­tic mon­u­ments erect­ed in their hon­our. Lou Costel­lo right­ly deserves his own park which is sit­u­at­ed on Paterson’s route, while Ohio Blue Tip match­es, a brand used by the cou­ple, become the cat­a­lyst for a love poem. Pater­son writes his poems while Jar­musch is busy craft­ing his.

It’s hard to place this film with­in the director’s canon: it has that dri­ving-around-aim­less­ly vibe of Mys­tery Train and Night on Earth; there’s the crest­fall­en sad­sack of Bro­ken Flow­ers; the bold, sur­pris­ing genre decon­struc­tions of The Lim­its of Con­trol; and the belief that art is the essence of life (or at least the thing that makes it bear­able) from Only Lovers Left Alive. Con­sid­er­ing all these con­nec­tions, Pater­son is still out there on its own, stak­ing its casu­al claim for down­home originality.

The film’s cycli­cal struc­ture and its use of sin­gle-serv­ing bit play­ers enhances its claim that life itself is just a secret scrap­book of poet­ic thoughts. Oh look, there’s Method Man spit­ting rhymes in a 24-hour laun­drette. There’s Sam and Suzy from Moon­rise King­dom dis­cussing the roots of late 19^th cen­tu­ry Ital­ian anar­chism. Every­thing has rhyme, meter, mean­ing and emo­tion. Oppo­sites attract and, when com­bined, form some­thing new. Brus­sel sprout and ched­dar cheese pie, anyone?

Watch­ing Pater­son is a game of guess­ing how Jar­musch came up with such a curi­ous and play­ful con­cept. Maybe he just start­ed with the loca­tion and start­ed to exca­vate, look­ing for inter­est­ing peo­ple and sto­ries and then build­ing asso­ci­a­tions between them. A notice board at a local dive bar col­lects archive news­pa­per cut­tings which remind the patrons that Pater­son is a city that has pro­duced many valu­able cul­tur­al icons.

This is a film which proves the the­sis that any­thing, any­where or any­one looked at for long enough will start to change, will pro­voke inter­pre­ta­tion and hope­ful­ly become the cat­a­lyst for an enchant­i­ng tale, or pos­si­bly form the basis of leg­end. And while every­thing we see has its prece­dent set in exist­ing art, exis­tence is so rich and unten­able that there’s always room for a lit­tle more. It also offers a most del­i­cate take­down of ram­pant com­mer­cial regen­er­a­tion and the 21^st cen­tu­ry desire to con­stant­ly change and update. Pater­son refus­es to buy in to the smart­phone rev­o­lu­tion and also jots down his poems in a phys­i­cal note­book and with a ball-point pen. Lau­ra, mean­while, spends her day at home cus­tomis­ing drapes and prepar­ing for farm­ers markets.

There’s a com­ic ten­sion between the pair born from these light­ly oppos­ing atti­tudes, but Jar­musch isn’t using the film to lament the lost era of the ana­logue, but he says that it’s very pos­si­ble for those who pine for the past and those with misty-eyed sights on the future to live in hap­pi­ness. Pater­son is a pure shot of oblique charm. It’s like a muse­um to wan­der around and gawp at all the won­der­ful exhibits.