Paterson, film review: Here’s the way to balance boredom and bliss

Jim Jarmusch's mellow drama offers the audience a new perspective on time, says Charlotte O'Sullivan
Quiet, thoughtful: Paterson
Charlotte O'Sullivan25 November 2016

Director Jim Jarmusch enjoys making mellow dramas. His latest follows a week in the life of an unassuming New Jersey bus driver. Paterson (Adam Driver) is incapable of being where it’s at: seriously, even when leaping in front of a flying bullet, he’s a stranger to danger.

When we first meet him he delights in the poems he writes in his spare time and his creative wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani). By the closing frame (spoiler alert!) not a whole lot has changed. But, as in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky — also about a calm person with an unglamorous job — you don’t feel your time has been wasted. If anything, what you gain is a new perspective on time.

Jarmusch’s real influence here is J D Salinger, who was famous for creating childlike adults and Zen-smart kids. This film is stuffed with both and even has a Japanese tourist (Masatoshi Nagase) who recognises that our hero has found a perfect balance between boredom and bliss.

True, some of Paterson’s poems are just dull-dull. And the whimsy can be cloying. But the acting is fantastic. Driver, the consummate scene-stealer in Girls and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, has no trouble dominating the frame. Each time my attention wandered, some detail would lure me back in.

Paterson keeps seeing twins but never tells anyone. A sub-plot involving Laura’s pugnacious dog gets a neat ending, but the best threads hang loose.

Cert 15, 118 mins

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