Writers-Movies, Day 5: Paterson

There is something magical about the movie Paterson

But, then again, there's something magical about every Jim Jarmusch joint.

Paterson is a poem; it's a love-poem to poetry, and it is actually a poem (several, in fact) being written on the screen as we watch the film.

If you've been to New Jersey (and I have been to New Jersey), the last thing you would think is 'poetry,' and if it were poetry you were thinking, it would be some industrial/manufacturing/dispossessed kind of poetry, no? But, surprise-surprise: William Carlos Williams lived in Paterson, NJ, and Paterson, the bus-driving poet, lives in Paterson, and, because it's a Jim Jarmusch joint, this little film works, and works beautifully.

Here, we have a poet that, unlike Miss Flora Post in Cold Comfort Farm who can sponge off of relatives (which we reviewed yesterday), Paterson is just a dude, so he has to have a job, and his job is being a bus-driver (so, Adam Driver being a bus-driver makes perfect Jarmuschian sense), and on his job, and walking his dog, and sitting at the bar, he gets to observe life, and record it in poems in his little poetry-journal.

Paterson is very much an observer, and the movie Paterson moves at this pace: it's unfettered by any need to rush into action and has an entirely unhurried air. Because of this freedom, the film gets to say a lot, just by watching the characters, and, not surprisingly, it packs in a lot more into this film than a blockbuster can afford to do.

It's funny: Avengers: Infinite Whatever, a film that cost one BILLION dollars to produce, has a plot that reduces to "must stop the bad guy" and has no character-development whatsoever. Paterson, however, looks like it was financed with a credit card, but we get to know not only Paterson, but his wife, his shift-manager, some friends at the bar, and even a bunch of punks in a five-four warning him about the dangers of dog-napping. And we get to learn about and to appreciate the city of Paterson, itself, so much so that it becomes a character in the movie. Paterson wasn't filmed in Paterson because it was just some j-random town they picked; no, Paterson was filmed in Paterson, because Paterson has a rich, living history. Paterson was filmed in Paterson, because it couldn't possibly be filmed anywhere else, and my hat's off to Jim Jarmusch in showing me a little town in New Jersey that, by the end of the film, I fell in love with and would love to visit, and walk about, and live there, and write poetry, and drive a bus, and listen to the conversations the locals have about ... well, anything.

And, I'll admit this: I wrote down every poem written by Paterson, and the little girl, in the movie Paterson.

Judge me.

Paterson informs my writing thus:

• Plot? What is plot? My stories are character-driven stories, but they are not plot-free. I develop my stories from a plot-perspective – beginning, middle, end – and I have that nailed before I write a word, but then, each chapter, as I write it, the characters surprise me with their own revelations, and sometimes (every time? I'm not sure) I have to abandon the plot, because the characters say: "No. We're doing this now." And they say this, not because The Plot Must Change. No, they say this because the plot is immaterial to where they are now in their lives. They're not going to jump off a cliff now because that's just not who they are. Paterson is not a plotless movie, but it is a movie where the plot is immaterial. The characters make their choices that they make every day, the same choices they made yesterday, and the 'plot' naturally falls out from that, because there is no 'The Plot,' there is simply people lives their lives.
• Settings. I research my settings. Why? I want to know where a turn in the road leads to a mountain view, or is the center of town ... empty? thriving? If it's New England, where's the Dunkin Donuts? If it's California, is it North or South California, on the coast or in the desert? I want a reader to be able to feel like they can walk in my book and breathe the air, and know what it feels like. Paterson brings the town of Paterson to life.
• Paterson is a movie of rabbit-holes: a series of journeys with no destinations in mind, so it may be considered in stark contrast to the Lord of the Rings, where there always is a destination ever before the Fellowship. Lord of the Rings is a very tiresome and anxious movie (the books I found to be quite a different experience). Paterson is the opposite: you flow along with the movie, and are delighted to find yourself talking to a little girl who writes her own poetry, or find yourself by a laundromat, of all places, listening in on a rapper honing his craft, or, lo! and behold! what is a tourist from Japan doing in Paterson, New Jersey, but to visit the town where William Carlos Williams lived! Paterson lets you explore and discover and be and at your own pace, because our man Paterson is in no hurry to get 'there,' wherever this 'there' happens to be. Even in Paterson, New Jersey, one can stop to smell the roses.

Paterson is a beautiful little love-poem to Paterson, New Jersey. Take some of your precious time to watch this movie; it is time taken you will treasure.