Sunday, February 12, 2017

Bus driver's life unfolds randomly in "Paterson"



Jim Jarmusch's Paterson glides along methodically, its protagonist's poetic prose and mundane life as a New Jersey bus driver playing out like scenes from a theatrical production heavy on metaphors and allegory, and not much on plot.  Adam Driver plays the titular character (the title also refers to the movie's setting as well as the protagonist) as a man whose virtue is his ability to write numerous poems during the downtime moments of his very uneventful job - despite the fact that he's clearly not very talented at such a task (if I'm somehow mistaken, and if Paterson's poetry is actually supposed to be good, than I've missed the point completely).  Paterson's wife, played by the charming Golshifteh Farahani, is the kind of upbeat and adventurous woman who seems to be the complete opposite of her husband (one does wonder what in the world these two share in common), and their relationship is basically more realistic than dramatic; or in other words, it's just... boring.  If a movie is supposed to resemble real life, it should at least have some drama, and a scenario capable of engaging its audience in order to compensate for the absence of tension.  As structured, Paterson plays out more like one of Paterson's poems: without rhyme or reason, it simply exists, yet it never justifies that existence.
C



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