Paterson, by Jim Jarmusch - feature film

The poetry of detail is what defines Paterson, Jim Jarmusch's film about a bus driver/poet named Paterson (played by Adam Driver), who lives in Paterson, New Jersey. Inspiration for Jarmusch was William Carlos Williams' collection Paterson, in which Williams plays with the idea of a man representing a city and vice versa.

The film shows us a week in the life of Paterson, and it doesn't bore us for a moment. Paterson wakes up, eats his Cheerios, drives his bus and writes poetry, comes home to his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), walks her dog to the local bar and drinks a beer. In Paterson, life is not made up of the big moments, it's the small ones, the everyday ones. This is what our lives are largely made up of. Paterson the man takes the time to notice them, and Paterson the film gives us time to ponder the meaning of such details, shows us that the essence is in the details.

Adam Driver plays Paterson as a quiet, thoughtful, kind and gentle man who is not easily disturbed. At the same time, as a viewer, you sense that there is much going on beneath his expressionless silences. What he cannot express in emotion, he does through his poetry.

Paterson is pure Jarmusch. It takes place in his world, it is populated by his people, it is slow and meditative without being uninteresting, it is thoughtful, it is poetic, it is unimpressively essential. Paterson's poems in the film were written by the poet Ron Padgett, who, like Joe Brainard and Ted Berrigan, is counted among the second generation of New York School of Poetry.

This film can be attended with a day ticket or festival passe-partout, or with a film ticket, to be booked through the film agenda of LantarenVenster.