PATERSON — CANNES 2016
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Cannes, France —Jim Jarmusch has grown as a filmmaker over the course of his rich and studied career. “Paterson” is his finest film to date. Everything about it resonates with a distinctly human scale. Every emotional expression carries the weight of patience. If there’s one thing Jim Jarmusch understands, it is poetry.
Visual poetry. Filmic poetry. Poetry of thought. Poetry of intention. The list of ways that the auteur explores his subject’s sublime mundane reality, expands.
Adam Driver plays Paterson, a city bus driver from (where else?) Paterson, N.J. Paterson lives with his ingenious pixie of a wife Laura (Golashifteh Farahani). A Luddite sensibility provides the audience with a welcome escape from technology overload. Paterson doesn't even own a cellphone. Laura works solely in black and white, painting on textiles to create curtains, dresses, hats, and whatever strikes her fancy. She dreams of becoming a country singer. Perhaps a "harlequin" guitar by "Estoban" can help her dream come true.
The compatible couple live in a just-so single lot cottage-style house with her dog Marvin. We know it’s Laura’s dog because Paterson never talks to Marvin; Laura does all of the people/animal communication. Still, Paterson takes Marvin for his nightly walk to a neighborhood bar populated by mostly black patrons. Paterson brings in a newspaper clipping about Iggy Pop being voted sexiest man alive after a gig in Patterson back in the late ‘60s.
The joint’s kindly owner/bartender Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley) adds the document to the Paterson Wall of Fame, which he keeps as a shrine over the cash register. It’s a poetic moment in a film gushing with emotional resonance. The ever-evolving filmmaker uses onscreen handwriting graphics to show Paterson’s beautiful poems flow from his hand.
“Paterson” is the kind of movie that you walk out of the cinema a changed person as a result of having seen it. The movie purifies the viewer in a gentle and loving way. It reminds us that we are all poets if we invest a little of our experiences into words. Welcome to Paterson.
Not Rated. 113 mins.