Looking Back at PATERSON: Wonderful Affirmation of Life

Paterson is the bus driver’s surname. Paterson is also the name of the city through which the bus runs. The driver, the bus, and the city are one body, one organism, breathing in the steady rhythm of daily routine.

It is a true Groundhog Day. Paterson wakes up every morning at the same hour, cuddles his girlfriend, and listens to yet another eccentric monologue from his beloved. For breakfast he eats a bowl of cornflakes, and then he heads to work, where he listens to snippets of conversations from his passengers.

He comes back home, listens attentively as the adorably extroverted Laura tells him about her day, then takes Marvin (an equally delightful English bulldog) for an evening walk. The culmination of his day is a pint of beer at a nearby bar and a conversation with the friendly bartender. Fade out. End of Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday will be the same.

That’s not all. I’m saving the most important thing for last. Paterson has a hobby, though perhaps I should put it more nicely and say that he is gifted with a unique sensitivity that finds its outlet on the page. Paterson writes poetry, though he probably wouldn’t want me to call him a poet. He is too modest for that.

He sculpts his poems throughout the day: eating breakfast, walking to work, traveling through the streets of the city of Paterson in his bus called Paterson. Jarmusch’s verse-maker doesn’t have a computer, a tablet, or even a phone. He writes down new lines in a small notebook he never parts with throughout the day.

Laura asks him to copy his poems, just for safety; that way the world will one day be able to admire them. But publishing doesn’t interest Paterson. It’s not about applause or sharing his work with others. The notebook is his breviary, and writing is a form of daily prayer—personal, intimate, humble.

Paterson’s style is closest to the New York School, mentioned in one of the scenes. Its representatives, such as Frank O’Hara and John Ashbery, practiced the poetry of everyday life. They did not shy away from colloquialisms or trivial subject matter; they were fascinated by ordinary, seemingly mundane reality. Paterson is a stoic, a saint of our times. He speaks little, prefers to pour his feelings onto paper, and is kind and understanding toward people.

The previously described routine may seem to viewers like the source of internal conflicts for the two protagonists, a trap with no escape (as in suburban dramas: Revolutionary Road or American Beauty), but they will quickly see that Paterson and Laura fit perfectly into it and are happy. It is the ability to notice the extraordinary in the everyday that fuels the protagonist’s creativity and his love for Laura; routine is their ally.

At first I held it against Jarmusch that he created a protagonist who doesn’t evolve, doesn’t act, and carries no dramatic conflict within him. That’s not it at all. That’s not what this is about. There is a moment in Paterson, near the end of the film, that we had been subconsciously waiting for throughout the whole screening, but which took a long time to arrive.

The tension built from the very beginning, born of the question hanging in the air: will the protagonist crack, rebel? I won’t tell you whether he cracks. I’ll only say that Jarmusch resolved the action masterfully. Although on the other hand, how can you resolve an action that was, in fact, never established? What action, for heaven’s sake?

The entire film is a New York–School poem in praise of everyday life. Seemingly the same all the time, the same route to work as always, until suddenly the protagonist meets a pair of elderly twins on his way. Strange, in the context of the dream Laura told him about that morning when they woke up. She dreamed she had given birth to twins. Coincidence or the finger of God? Or perhaps one speaks through the other?

Paterson is a wonderful affirmation of life, a director’s prayer for peace of mind—heartening and wise, elevated yet simple. Just as Paterson writes on a blank page, Jarmusch fills the screen with the words of the protagonist’s poems (of his own alter ego?), in rhythm with his off-screen recitation. Jarmusch’s film and Paterson’s notebook are one and the same. A manuscript found on the sidewalk.