Paterson

In Jim Jarmusch’s meditative slice of life Paterson, Adam Driver plays a bus driver poet named Paterson who hails from the eponymous city in New Jersey. Wise, wistful and warm, the unassuming story follows Paterson through a week of daily routines—morning rituals, snatches of overheard conversations on the bus, dinner with his artsy flake wife, an evening beer at the bar and on to bed, with a few lines of poetry and moments of reflection squeezed in here and there. As Paterson goes through the mechanisms of his day, we see his spare, William Carlos Williams-esque verse written out on the screen, and the film ultimately works as a sort of poetry process movie. Poetry is about taking the realities of your life and the complexities of your mind and heart and transforming them into something beautiful and pure, and that’s exactly what Jarmusch does with Paterson. It’s lovely stuff. D.B.