![]() We meet them everywhere, starting with Driver, himself – both the actor’s name, a description of the man he plays, as well as his character’s eponymous hometown – and then continuing through a succession of actual twins who pop up on the bus, on park benches, and even in the movie to which Paterson and Laura go on a Saturday night, after which he tells her that she and the actress therein “could be twins.” And on and on. That, and the constant motif of twins that runs through the film. Indeed, the repetition of routines is key to this revelation. Paterson reverses this formula, pushing the fantastic below the surface as it presents two ordinary individuals whose lives become ever more extraordinary the more time we spend with them. Jarmusch’s last movie, Only Lovers Left Alive, told the love story of two vampires struggling to live ordinary extraordinary lives. Instead, he’s a contemplative soul if saving the world is his calling, he will do so through art. Here, however, our hero does not harbor psychotic visions of martyrdom. In that sense, the metaphor of the bus is perfect, much as was the taxi in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 Taxi Driver, as Paterson is often invisible to those around him, yet still very much present. A choice, to participate or remain apart, always hangs in the air. It’s a good life, more or less, but is it enough? Every night, Paterson walks the dog to the local watering hole – another routine – where his outsider observations continue. Both Driver and Farahani draw us into this world of small stakes writ large, theirs a moving portrait of a living marriage, quirks and all. Time and again, we revisit the streets of Paterson, ever familiar, yet always different the trick is to recognize the latter while never drowning in the former. We see the words of these verses on the screen, watching his process unfold. Paterson, at least, has a routine: he’s a bus driver and poet, observing the world from his front-seat perch as he composes odes to love and matchbooks (separately or together), finding inspiration in what to others might seem the daily grind of the mundane. Golshifteh Farahani ( Rosewater), as Laura, his wife, is equally fine as a restless young woman who loves her husband (and he, her), yet suffers from the burden of her aimless small-town life. ![]() Adam Driver ( While We’re Young), as the titular character, who shares his name with the town – Paterson, New Jersey – in which he lives, delivers a performance of subtle variegation in which much is said with but a shrug or a laugh. ![]() For one, the irony is largely absent secondly, this is a complete story, start to finish, beautifully rendered (if still, occasionally, puzzling). Which is why Paterson, his latest, is such a welcome surprise. He excels at sketch-based writing, if not dramatic arcs. The gentle humor he mines from seemingly ordinary circumstances is a wonder, even if the sum total of the scenes in each film does not always a satisfying narrative make. The defining characteristic of all of these films has been the ironic stance that Jarmusch takes towards his subjects, viewing them through the prism of his quizzical view of the human animal. Following his debut, he continued to make off-beat, bone-dry dramedies like Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), Night on Earth (1991), Dead Man (1995), Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999), Broken Flowers (2005) and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), to name some of his better-known fiction works (he also directed the documentary Year of the Horse, about Neil Young, in 1997). Ever since his first theatrical feature, Stranger Than Paradise, in 1984 – which won the Caméra d’Or (Best First Feature) award at the Cannes Film Festival – American indie auteur Jim Jarmusch has accumulated a growing cult fan base.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |