I have been going to watch Paterson since it was announced that Adam Driver (also known as one of the characters of tv series Girls) will be the protagonist of one of the latest movies of Jim Jarmusch.
For the photographer, pretty much every movie that Jim Jarmusch filmed is a must watch, and Paterson is a true gem. Reflective, paced, rhythmic and visually balanced, this movie is slow and metronomic, it is filled with little details and symbolic deja vus echoing around the character. Jarmusch breaks the story into 7 parts, 7 days from Monday to Sunday. Paterson wakes up without a clock every morning, eats the same cereal for breakfast, drives the bus around the city of Paterson, walks the dog in the evening en route to the bar. In this monotonous schedule, he always finds the time for his hobby – writing poetry in a small notebook. It’s almost like a ritual – he scribes lines of his poems several minutes before the bus drive starts, at lunch time while admiring the waterfall and after work at the basement of his house.
Paterson doesn’t create his poems to be perfect, he doesn’t even want to read them out loud or publish. What seems to be truly important is the reflective and unconscious process of observing and putting words flow on paper. Despite of the art you’re making, Paterson tells us that there’s inspiration everywhere – it might come from chatter on the bus, strangers you meet on the street, from cherishing your loved ones, and even from such mundane object as the matchbox.
