On PATERSON: Sometimes a whisper is all you need.
How the latest from Jarmusch became my favorite movie of the year without ever raising its voice.
2016 was many things, but quiet wasn’t one of them. Who didn’t let out a primal scream? Who didn’t spend weeks writing in ALL CAPS for a spell? By the end of November, I chose drinking over thinking and was grateful for anything that seemed more thoughtful than what my Facebook feed was throwing up.
Along comes Jim Jarmusch’s latest, depicting a week in the life of a bus driver (Adam Driver) named Paterson in yes, Paterson, NJ, who writes poetry in his free time. “Paterson” is also the name of a book of poems about the town written by his favorite poet, William Carlos Williams. He’s happily married to Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), and walks their bulldog to his neighborhood bar for a beer on weeknights. And that’s it. It seems to poke fun at the very idea of the plot twist or the cliffhanger. And even its one moment of life and death danger ends with a sigh.
And yet, it was hypnotic and hilarious and one of the most profoundly moving times I’ve had in the dark this year. Jarmusch doesn’t deviate from his trademark style, but rather than apply it to a particular genre, inventing Jarmuchian gunslingers, samurais or vampires, he deploys it in a character study on a seemingly ordinary person. The result is something as rich and satisfying as anything he’s ever done.
Character studies rise and fall with their actors and Adam Driver merges with the material so deftly his performance is easy to disregard. The standard issue movie star is basically a midget with a massive head, so often they’re trying to desperately swell themselves up to seem larger. But Driver is constantly shrinking himself down, like he’s trying to squeeze his frame into a smaller, meeker package. The few times he’s unfurled his anger on GIRLS it’s genuinely disturbing. No wonder he’s the big bad for that little franchise set in outer space.
As Paterson, Driver’s performance is the real special effect. A tilt of the head, a sigh, a look around at his wife’s hand-made curtains, all speak volumes. That happy marriage isn’t ridiculous because we see Paterson get annoyed or exasperated and then decide to let it go. The stakes of any modest interaction are written in his face, in how he hangs his head or smiles or refrains from saying a word.
I’ve often argued the real measure of a movie actor is how transparent their thinking is during a close-up. Tarantino often quips that action directors are the only real directors since they rely on cinema’s visual language to communicate, but I think that’s unfair to how revealing the human face, or people’s body language is. It’s also rich coming from a guy who relies as heavily as he does on verbal pissing contests.
Jarmusch has always understood the power of presenting human behavior without commenting on it with other directorial flourishes. His static frames forces us to watch the actors more closely, and courts a lovely straight faced humor. He’s been doing that since STRANGERS IN PARADISE, and in a way his meditative approach is consistent enough to be one of the most distinct styles of any filmmaker today.
Here, he renders each day of the week with near duplicate framing, cut at the same pace, depicting the same wake up, work chatter, dinner at home and beer at night. Paterson’s routine isn’t just constant; it’s filmed in such a consistent manner that expectations are firmly established.
And that makes any deviation feel like an earthquake. When happenstance is rendered in such a precisely controlled environment, it grabs us in a way a gunshot would in anything else. In this bubble, the bar is set low enough that everyday life takes on a newfound power.
And yes, there’s poetry. I came of age when poems were basically a laughing matter in pop culture. In college, the poets took themselves so seriously, they couldn’t be anything other than jokes. I read poetry in school, and then inched my way back with some Keats and Blake of late, but I’d sooner share my browser history than discuss that.
The poems by Paterson, some credited to Ron Padgett, are spoken aloud and written on screen in a cursive. It might seem a precious, unnecessary choice, but it didn’t bother me. They weren’t rendered as GREAT WORDS, but as working drafts of Paterson’s writing process. Jarmusch wisely allows Paterson to write, rewrite and abandon a word or phrase as he reads his work in voice-over as it changes.
That’s refreshing, since movies usually treat writing as dictation from an all-knowing Muse, when it’s a lot closer to carpentry, though to craft something that may not fit anywhere or be of use to anyone. And yes, if there was anything approximating a concrete plot here, it would concern what Paterson does with his poems.
And here is where Paterson the movie becomes an outlier and truly vital to the times. Paterson’s writing isn’t a professional ambition. It’s a pleasure, a way of processing the world around him. His wife practically begs him to merely make a copy of his work to preserve it.
Paterson’s a veteran, and there’s a nod to the fact that the experience may haunt him, but the poems are not about the horrors of war. They’re about love and everyday experiences, much like his idol, William Carlos Williams, who paid the bills as a working physician.
Think about the last time there was a movie about an artist of any kind that wasn’t about professional success? The hunt for it, the lack of it, the achievement of it? Biopics are one of the last refuges of straight drama in Hollywood, which naturally leads to a focus on the famous and accomplished. Even the ones about fictional artists often chart the journey towards money and fame/infamy (as if there’s a difference anymore).
Professional success, or its mother, professional ambition, is an established trope in the man child stories that litter our culture. “It’s time to grow up,” is a refrain often put to that slacker who just won’t settled down. Growing up too often is submitting that short story or managing a band, since these are fool proof ways to provide for a family now. And presto, they are on their way to a two-car garage. In Hollywood, as soon as a guy, or increasingly a woman, gets their shit together, the world suddenly lifts them to a higher tax bracket.
But Paterson is a grown ass man already, with a house, a wife and bills. His wife flirts with manic pixie dream girl territory, but sidesteps that with her own interests. She may talk about becoming a country star or a sensation for her cupcakes, but there’s a twinkle in her eye that says she knows she won’t be on CMT or the Food Network. Instead, she bakes cupcakes for the Farmer’s Market and asks for a $300 guitar with DVD lessons like it may break their bank. How fucking refreshing to watch people fret about money on screen, without resorting to a foreclosed house.
There’s no mention of Paterson quitting his job to write poems. Zero. His poetry isn’t some vehicle for upward mobility. It’s a way for him to savor his life, and maybe understand it, and himself, a little better.
It’s why any threat to it matters more, not less.
And in 2017, that lack of ambition feels radical. Much is made of millennial conformity and self-entitlement, but both are rooted in a sense that this generation has got to be successful and successful immediately, or they’ll be failures. Because in a meritocracy, the dark turd buried under the fancy carpet is that people who can’t make it, deserve their shitty life, without the luxuries of healthcare or a living wage.
But as a fellow grown ass man, there’s plenty of reasons why people aren’t in the 1%, and precious few of them are the result of personal flaws. But let me clarify. Jarmusch isn’t suggesting that we pity Paterson. This isn’t poverty porn, where people who can’t afford pilates are all angels quietly weeping under the weight of the indifferent rich.
The working folks in this universe crack jokes, bitch and screw up. Basically, they resemble people, not stand-ins who exist to illustrate an issue. And Jarmusch isn’t interested in pretending these people are the only “real Americans.” There’s no contrast with the “phonies” to serve them up as somehow better. They aren’t better. But they aren’t worse, which seems revolutionary in the wake of current events.
There’s one exception to this. One person whose behavior is exemplary. It’s Paterson. Not for his fucking poems. But for his real gift: his kindness. Time and time again, he interacts with his world with patience and understanding. Driver doesn’t make it look easy for Paterson. There’s a pause when he might snap back or complain. His wife’s homemade curtains are ridiculous and it’ll be tight to buy that guitar, by why not support her? After all, Paterson’s marriage is a comfort, not a burden. Like mine. And maybe like two or three others.
Pop culture usually portrays characters like Paterson as living lives of quiet desperation, but what if they’re living lives of uncommon richness? On one of his evening walks, Paterson eavesdrops on a guy working on a rap verse in a laundromat, played with touching grace by Method Man. Paterson takes the moment to tell him he’s on to something and walks on. It’s that small act of unwarranted decency that makes him so compelling.
Paterson doesn’t feel like it was made in some bygone era. It feels intimately of the moment, complete with smartphones and farmer’s markets. But that makes its counterpoint so much more profound.
In a world that seems to be screaming at me in every direction, flooding me with so much information I’m tempted to rely on the simplest interpretations of it all, I was grateful for the quiet of Paterson. It soothed me, made me laugh and look for the beauty on the streets where I live. It inspired me to walk a little slower and look up from my phone to see the poetry unfolding before me. Most of all, it’s a whisper so precise and eloquent, it managed to drown out all the yelling that defined the past year.
And how could anything beat that?
