Paterson (film)

The film shows the week of Paterson’s life ( Adam Driver ), a bus driver in Paterson , New Jersey. Every day, Paterson is the same as the previous one: he gets up early, has breakfast, goes to the car park, where he gets on the bus and drives around the city all day, and during breaks he writes poems in a notebook. In the evening he returns home, dines with his wife Laura ( Golshifte Farahani ), and then goes for a walk with the bulldog Marvin. On the way, he goes to the bar to have a beer.

Laura has long asked Paterson to publish his poems, or at least make a copy of the manuscript that exists in a single copy. Finally, Paterson promises that at the weekend he will make a copy of the notebook in the copy center. But on Saturday evening, Paterson and Laura go to the movies, and at this time Marvin is tearing the notebook left on the couch to shreds.

On Sunday morning, the devastated Paterson goes out for a walk, and comes to his favorite place - a waterfall on the river Passeyk where he often sits at lunchtime. There, a mysterious Japanese man ( Masatoshi Nagase ) sits down to him, who begins a conversation about William Carlos Williams , the favorite poet of Paterson, the author of the poem “ Paterson ". Leaving, the Japanese gives Paterson a clean notebook.

The film ends with shots in which Paterson writes new poems in a notebook presented by a Japanese.

In April 2014, Jim Jarmusch mentioned in an interview that the list of his projects includes a film about a poet working as a bus driver in the city of Paterson ^[5] . Jim Jarmusch has been nurturing the idea of ​​the film for over twenty years. During this time, a large number of notes have accumulated, and the draft script was written within a few weeks ^{[1] [2]} .

In January 2016, it became known that Adam Driver and Golshifte Farahani were casting for the main roles in the film, called “Paterson”. K5 International and Amazon Studios engaged in the production of the picture ^[6] .

Before starting the shooting, Adam Driver took a course in driving a bus and got a driver's license of the appropriate category. The film was shot in 30 days in the summer of 2015 in Paterson and New York ^[1] .

In "Paterson" verses of the modern American poet Ron Padzhetta are used , some of them were written specifically for the film ^{[7] [2] [8]} . The poem Water Falls (“Water Falls” ^{[approx. 1]} ), which the girl wrote in the plot of the film, was composed by Jarmusch himself ^[8] .

The world premiere took place on May 16, 2016 at the Cannes Film Festival , where the film was nominated for the Golden Palm . ^[4] In Russia, the premiere took place on February 16, 2017 ^[9] .

Throughout the film, Paterson meets other fictional poets: a ten-year-old girl who reads Water versatile versatile poet, a laundry rapper, and, in the final, a pilgrim poet from Japan. At the same time, the film is filled with references to real poets, first of all to William Carlos Williams , one of the largest American poets of the first half of the 20th century, the author of the epic five-volume poem “Paterson” .

William’s “Paterson” poem was a source of inspiration for Jim Jarmusch. In an interview for Time, he mentions that the poem is not close to him, he did not understand most of it, but thanks to this poem and especially the “man-city” metaphor, the idea of ​​a script about the daily life of an unknown poet appeared ^{[2] [3]} . The protagonist calls Williams one of his favorite poets and reads his wife Laura the famous poem This Is Just To Say (" English. Only to say "). A Japanese poet, who gave Paterson a clean notebook, tells him that he came to Paterson out of an interest in Williams' work ^{[approx. 2]} .

In Paterson, the New York poetic school is mentioned. The work of the poets of this school and, in particular, of Ron Padgett ^{[approx. 3]} , the author of most of the poems from Paterson ^[2] , and Frank O'Hara , was greatly influenced by William Carlos Williams ^[8] . Williams was also a mentor to Allen Ginsberg ^{[approx. 4]} , a well - known beat poet - he spent his childhood in Paterson.

Another representative of the New York school mentioned in the film is Kenneth Koch ^{[approx. 5]} , a poet and playwright, who taught literature at Columbia University for more than forty years, where Jim Jarmusch studied ^[11] . William Carlos Williams had a significant impact on the early Koch. Subsequently, when Koch took up teaching, Wilms' verses occupied the top line of his recommendations to his student poets ^[12] .

In addition to references to the work of American poets, the atmosphere of the “city of poets” is formed by minor details of the film. The epiphora used by Jarmusch creates a rhythm and forms numerous rhymes that help translate poetry into the language of cinema ^{[approx. 6]} : Laura “formatting” the surrounding world with her black and white patterns, repeating the motif of twins several times, pushing a dog with a mailbox every day.

The film rating on the Rotten Tomatoes aggregator is 95% with an average rating of 8.6 out of 10 ^[14] .

Colin Covert, in a review for the Star Tribune, gave the film the highest rating, noting Jarmusch’s inherent attention to detail — the impeccability of the production of any, even at first glance, secondary stage ^[15] .

Owen Gleiberman, the leading film critic of Variety magazine, Jarmusch’s artistic language seemed outdated. He drew attention to the fact that the aesthetics of his films remained almost unchanged since the “ Mysterious Train ” filmed in 1987, and by 2016 the charm of the meditative rhythm faded - “Paterson” looks like an artificial attempt to stay in the 20th century, the century of black and white cinema and beatnik poets ^[16] .

Ann Hornaday, in a review for The Washington Post, notes that Jarmusch’s return to the principle of refusing serious conflicts in narration thirty years ago adorns the film, adding to it sincerity and warmth, “thanks to which the viewer may want to embrace the film’s characters first and then author ” ^[17] .

Critic Ivan Chuvilyaev called “Paterson” the “most lyrical and touching” picture of 2016. He does not consider the monotony of narrative saturated with repetitive structures as a disadvantage - in the calm story “about small things from which the world is woven” one senses a recognizable, refined style over the years for a long time familiar director. The film critic especially noted the work of the operator, Frederick Elms , who worked with Lynch on the Head Eraser and Blue Velvet , and with Jarmusch (" Night on Earth ", " Coffee and Cigarettes ", " Broken Flowers "):

In Paterson, Elms creates almost half of the film’s entire magic: it works with filigree with color, deciding the tape in black and white (Laura paints everything in these colors) and blue (like a bus driver, the sky in Paterson, the walls in the house , waterfall in a local park) gamma.

- Review for Fontanka.ru ^[18] .

Natalya Serebryakova sees behind the scenes of Paterson’s family life a story about “lonely gnawing a soul, impossibility to communicate with a close person,” the Bergman tragedy of relationships. Not everyday life is a source of inspiration for Paterson, but on the contrary - he hides from everyday life in the world of poetry. In this case, the lack of a painting is not called tragedy itself, but an attempt to soften and mask it with sugary artificial optimism:

... before, Jarmusch was not afraid to tell bitter, sarcastic stories, but now he seals the uncomfortable truth about life with vanilla, conditionally pats the viewer and his hero on the head.

- Review for Colta.ru ^[19] .

Stanislav Zelvaensky criticizes "Paterson" and other recent pictures of Jarmusch (" Limits of Control ", " Only Lovers Survive ") for the loss of natural "everyday poetry" and replacing it with an artificial "preaching cultural escapism", the emergence of focus on his own early work and his own personality :

The transformation with age from the voice of the generation to the inflated poser hovering in the clouds is a very common story, but in the case of Jarmusch it looks somehow especially offensive. The owner of keen hearing and a unique voice, once he stopped making films about people and started making films about creativity ... In other words, instead of looking out the window, Jarmusch began to look intently in the mirror - where every year, as we all know, everything is interesting less.

- Review for the magazine "Afisha" ^[20] .

• Dolin A.V. Jim Jarmusch. Poems and Music / Ed. Kozlovsky Yu. A., comp. A. Parin, V. Gulchenko. - UFO , 2017. - 224 with. - ISBN 978-5-4448-0625-8 .

• Juan A. Suarez. Jim Jarmusch . - University of Illinois Press, 2007. - 196 p. - (Contemporary Film Directors). - ISBN 9780252074431 .