A stunning study of everyday beauty

Being made an adjective is a double-edged sword. Take pity on Kafka – while having an eponymous adjective may mean your style has made its lasting mark on popular culture, it also means that it has become ripe for parody; never mind the legions of individuals who use Kafkaesque as a synonym for ‘dark’, ‘alienating’, or ‘pertaining to queues’. As such, perhaps American director Jim Jarmusch should be worried: over his last eleven films, since his directorial debut in 1980, Jarmusch has carved out a niche for himself in independent American cinema with his trademark style. Going into a Jarmusch film, you sort of know what to expect: reels of exceptionally-crafted dialogue; an industrial, washed-out soundtrack; and probably a cameo from Tom Waits. Surely it’s only a matter of time before ‘Jarmuschian’ enters into our popular lexicon.

On paper, Paterson, his 12th film, finds Jarmusch treading dangerously close to the realm of self-parody: Adam Driver stars as Paterson, a bus driver living in Paterson, New Jersey with a penchant for modernist American poetry, particularly William Carlos Williams, and his epic poem Paterson; Golshifteh Farahani plays his wife Laura, who turns her hand to numerous creative endeavours, and dreams of being a black-and-white-outfitted cupcake-baking country-star. The film covers a week in Paterson’s life, and the routine is immediately established: waking early, Paterson drives his bus around the city, eavesdropping on the passengers and writing poetry in his breaks while his wife paints and makes new outfits; returning home, he walks his dog and stops off at a bar for a beer. The scene fades to black, and the new day dawns.

And that’s pretty much it. The days aren’t all the same, but very little actually happens. There’s no grand narrative arc, no crucial denouement – in essence, Jarmusch rejects the conventional trappings of screenwriting. But Paterson is all the better for it: through paring down the plot, Jarmusch strips away any extraneous flesh, leaving a clean bone of a film – one that can powerfully yet subtly show off its best attributes. The dialogue, as you would expect from Jarmusch, is simply superb, completely nailing the wandering nature of conversational speech; it’s like being an intimate witness into dozens of fascinating conversations, allowing us to revel in the simple power of language. Cues and references in the script are brought back again and again, both visually and through speech, creating a many-layered film that belies its simple premise, and merits repeat viewings.

Driver is on superlative form here, easily delivering his best performance on screen yet. His Paterson is – compared to those around him – a quiet cypher, one who is more comfortable listening than talking, and stands at the eye of a cyclone of conversation; the majority of his lines come in the form of a voice-over of him reading his free-verse poems, written by New York School member Ron Padgett. Driver displays great bravery in taking on this role: poetry reading, especially in films, has associations with over-dramatisation and poor writing skills. Driver and Jarmusch eschew the easy option, which would have Driver reading out obviously poor-quality work; instead, Driver lovingly gives the poems the attention and care they deserve, but no more, making them all the more powerful for it. Similarly, Farahani is pleasingly earnest as Laura, whose creative interests pull her in a multitude of different directions. A lesser film would portray Laura as a scatterbrain, a dilettante who will never get anywhere. But Paterson never stoops this low: the central pair are perfectly charming, possessive of an inner strength as true and clear as the waterfall Paterson goes to every lunch-break for inspiration.

Paterson operates on one level as a rejection of modern life, made not in anger, but in quiet dignity, and a heroic tribute to blue-collar America: Paterson refuses to use a cell-phone, surrounds himself with mid-century design, and hides away in a basement den stacked with books and DIY paraphernalia. But it is far from a one-sided assault on modernity: Laura uses a laptop and a tablet, and Paterson never makes any form of grand statement about why he eschews technology. With Paterson, Jarmusch is not railing against the horror of screen-burn. Instead, he is encouraging us all to stop and look around, to take in the wonderful magic of everyday life. ‘They’re just words,’ Paterson says towards the end of the film, referring to the poems in his notebook. Yes, words may only be words, but in Paterson, Jarmusch has managed so masterfully to use spoken words to conjure up a fantastical tone poem, one whose strength lies in its stoic dignity. Paterson is a truly generous film, one that – to bastardize William Carlos Williams somewhat – is so sweet and so cool, in equal measures. It is an uplifting display of hope in these trying times: hope in the innate goodness of the human spirit, in the healing power of creativity, and in the essential beauty of everyday life.