The long and twisting roads of a quiet poet take him everyday through a town of inspiration, in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. Jarmusch himself writes this unorthodox story about Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey, a town known for some famous people whom time seems to have forgotten. Every day, Paterson adheres to a simple routine: he drives his daily route, he writes poetry into a notebook; he stops in a bar and drinks exactly one beer; and he goes home to his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani). By contrast, Laura’s world is ever changing. New dreams and aspirations come to her almost daily, humbling Paterson to keep his own secret ambition close to the chest, away from wandering eyes. The film quietly observes the triumphs and defeats of daily life, along with the poetry inspiration evident in its smallest details. Paterson is rated R for some adult language.

Paterson is a strange bird all together. It’s a movie that thrives on being different, from a man whose creativity in the methods and concepts of storytelling always offer something fresh and invigorating for an audience that frequent his kind of movies. Born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, it’s quite interesting to see a man like Jim acheive such success and greatness from his origins of no more than ten minutes up the road from where I currently watch and review movies nightly. To that degree, this is a movie that feels like it radiates that feeling of art imitating life, and relaying the struggles of trying to make it in a place where many others have already thrived. Whether you’re into poetry or not, this ideal in struggle is something familiar in all of us, and Jarmusch’s humble stroke brings to life a feeling that we could all be doing something better with our lives, even when the balance of routine feels comfortable on our daily happenings. Jarmusch succeeds once again at offering honest characters who clash with the backdrop of a town that seems too small for their wondrous ambitions. There certainly is a Paterson in and around all of us.

From a directing standpoint, few do it as well or better than Jarmusch’s soft and subtle lighting against framing work that is well-represented of the kind of environments and set pieces that come in and out of focus during the near two hour effort. For moments at a time, Paterson feels like a stage play that takes place in this bus that is frequented by some off-the-wall characters unaware of their lack of privacy amongst listening ears. It feels humorous without ever really trying, displaying that familiar message of life being funnier than anything that make believe can ever conjure up. To his passengers, Paterson feels like a void of a man. A shadow who is there to fulfill an obligation and nothing more, but to us his audience, we get a visual sampling of some of his purest words and thoughts in some visual on-screen text that carefully constructs an artistic merit to the film’s production. The words themselves are metaphors for the very thoughts and expressions burning a hole of passion through our central protagonist, and it’s clear that one viewing of this movie simply will not be enough when distinguishing everything that this lyrical lion-heart is trying to spill out on paper.

The narration hits and misses for anyone who is looking for something more enticing in conflict from this story that virtually has a minimalist plot. My problem with this aspect wasn’t so much that rarely anything happened, but in the misdirection of many possibilities in character direction along the way that just went unfulfilled. There’s certainly a setup to everything there, most notably in a communication problem in the relationship of Driver and Farahani, as well as a dog subplot that never goes anywhere past initial threats. Jarmusch does however thrive with a pen by depicting some surreal aspects to the concepts of repetition in routine, as well as the importance of getting your words out before it’s too late. Certainly everyone who sees Paterson is going to relate on a level of working a job that is anything but what we see ourselves doing, and a dreamer’s tale that is usually presented with such optimism in other films, is presented with a kind of humbling honesty once we become a product of our environments. Pictures of Paterson celebrities hang on the wall of Paterson’s favorite bar, and suddenly the desperation of obscurity becomes evident in the urgency of Driver’s character to be another face on that wall. Jarmusch tucks everything very closely to his lyrical prowess, and it’s clear that Jim has been to Paterson, even if he hasn’t BEEN to Paterson.

The cast? Stellar. This is leaps and bounds Adam Driver’s single best performance to date. As Paterson, Driver’s passion for words comes out fruitfully without this ever feeling like a cliche underdog story. What I found so enthralling about his character is that Driver plays it with a sprinkle of adolescence just screaming to get out, despite the fact that Paterson himself is a thirty-something career man who is miles from a dreamer’s paradise. When his girlfriend shuffles off dream after dream, you get a sense of real anger just below the surface of Adam’s quiet exterior, a feeling of desperation for his own passion always being put on the back burner of importance for a woman who is still searching for emotional growth within her. For this reason alone the duo of Driver and Farahani really thrived together on-screen, and their chemistry will ring true for any couple who sees this movie and feels the gentle breeze of clarity ring true in their surreal situational humor. This is the first time that I have ever seen Farahani in action, and while this is clearly Driver’s one man show, there’s plenty of room for someone who gauges the most intimate of reactions from her significant other. She can’t see what we do as an audience, and Farahani is the tight-fitting key that is molded perfectly to unlock the mystery of this fire burning deep.

Jarmusch triumphs once again, this time with a charming, patient, and observant depiction into the life of the mundane. Paterson is poetic in its simplistic approach to the procedural of the creative art of writing, and how our greatest inspirations come from the people and places around us who figuratively and lifterally drive us down the road of clarity. Like poetry, it isn’t confined to one style of structure, instead opting to drive home its meaning with intellectual words that are straight from the heart. Paterson is uneventful, but at the same time mesmerizing for its thick slice of life and provocative performance by Driver who leaves all of his best work on paper.

8/10