Review | Film review: Paterson – Adam Driver plays a bus-driving poet in Jim Jarmusch’s sublime tale of everyday life
Jarmusch makes the mundane beautiful, with Paterson’s quiet observations of daily life as he drives his bus around Paterson, New Jersey
4/5 stars
Most films about writers feel compelled to find the drama behind the pen – whether it’s the narcotics of Naked Lunch, the suicide of Sylvia or the murder of Kill Your Darlings. Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson does nothing of the sort, and it’s all the better for it.
A fictional tale about a bus-driving poet named Paterson, who hails from Paterson, New Jersey, it might sound typically Jarmuschian at first glance: idiosyncratic, self-conscious hipster cinema. Yet there’s much more to Paterson, a touching film about living the creative life.
Set over the course of a week, divided into daily chapters, it shows Paterson (Adam Driver) leading a very orderly existence. He gets up early every morning, goes to work, writes poetry before he starts his bus route, comes home, walks his dog Marvin, drinks a solitary beer in the neighbourhood bar and returns to his loving partner, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani).
