Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson – The Power of Holding Back
When a filmmaker prefers to withhold key messages from viewers, it is usually a great way to engage the audience in interpretation, trying to decipher the undecipherable. After watching Jim Jarmusch’s latest poetic masterpiece Paterson, the power of revelation is contextualized within the poems that the main character Paterson writes during his long, routine rides as a bus driver. He takes the same route every day, meets a bunch of new –or familiar – faces and reminisces on his life and the chance encounters he makes. His life seems to be monotonous, redundant from a superficial standpoint. But digging deeper through analyzing the text a.k.a Paterson’s poems, the viewer is involved in the experience of the film, not as a passive bystander but more of a pinnacle of the action taking place onscreen.
Paterson is a man who holds back emotions. He’s a decent person, the only breadwinner of the house, living with his wife; a live-in artist who is probably slightly agoraphobic and somehow infected with the art-for-art gene which convinced her to stay home and wait for the inspiration to hit.
While she stays at home trying to figure out whether she wants to become a country singer, a cup cake maker or a painter; Paterson got out there making the art through his mundane route, driving the bus in the same route he goes through every single day, without showing irritability or complaint.
The audience wonders if Paterson is really alive or simply living. He doesn’t seem irritated by anything, not when his wife orders a guitar when apparently they struggle financially, not when Marvin the dog eats his entire poetry collection, or when he takes a bite off his wife’s pie which he clearly does not enjoy eating.
“Paterson” is not a movie to be watched once. The viewer slowly chews their way through it; and begins to realize things they haven’t had a chance to pay attention to throughout the first sitting. The power of Paterson lies in the poems. If the protagonist hides everything he actually feels behind a smile and a gesture of peace, composed and stiff body language, his poetry is a minefield for interpretations and symbolism.