Film Review: Paterson – 6/10

‘Sometimes an empty page presents more possibilities…’

It’s easy to write a review about something you love. It’s easier still to review something that you really hate. It’s those in the middle films that are the most difficult. I’ve written something in the region of two thousand reviews since I started this dubious venture. What could I possibly still have left to say at this point? This is something that plagues me. I find myself using the same words and phrases over and over. Sometimes, I just don’t really have much to say. And so, to Paterson…

Paterson (Adam Driver) is a bus driver in a small town also named Paterson. He spends his days colouring the mundanity of life with poetry in the form of a notebook he carries around everywhere. On his travels, Paterson encounters various other like minded people who cause him to reflect on the triumphs and defeats of daily life.

Jim Jarmusch is a director who has almost entirely passed me by. Despite being hugely critically acclaimed, and well known for working with Tom Waits, I’ve never really explored his work. Paterson had a quietly successful run upon its release, and I’ve always been an Adam Driver fan so this seemed like the perfect starting point for all things Jarmusch.

In the end though, this is essentially a film where very little happens. I can see how Paterson will appeal to those of a poetic bent, but it didn’t do much for me. Driver’s quiet frustration saves the whole movie somewhat, but ultimately, this is a film that made me feel very little, and one that I suspect I will have forgotten about completely in a couple of months. And this is partly why I continue to do this. Not because I have anything interesting left to say (if I ever did in the first place), but because these reviews act as a sort of diary. A cinematic memoir that frames everything else going on in my life. And I can see the poetry in that.