Paterson, the movie by Jim Jarmusch

Before the glow wore off, I wanted to post this review of Paterson, the movie just out by Jim Jarmusch which is set in Paterson New Jersey.  What a beautiful and heartwarming movie.  It happens that I love poetry, and back some years, did a good deal of traveling from coffee shop to cafe to attend open mic's and other poetry events.  I even won a prize once!!  However, even if you have no interest in poetry, this movie is delightful.  

A Paterson city bus driver, also named Paterson, an "everyman" played marvelously by Adam Driver with such subtlety that he did reach that pinnacle of acting which was to so inhabit the character that he became him and you believed him as a real person.  It was a perfect work of Art in every way, visually (without prettifying a gritty post-industrial city) it makes Patterson's aged face gorgeous, and the slow pacing that is so hard to carry in our hasty and impatient modern society, becomes meditative and allows you to fall into a reverie.

The characters are charismatic.  You can't help but fall in love with the quiet manly chivalry of Paterson, the poet/bus driver, and his scintillating and lovely wife.  The quiet contemplative style allows you to really see the characters in the bar and on the bus, not as some fast glimpse cliche, but as touching and human and real.

I have always wanted to visit Paterson because of its fascinating history as a silk capital in the world trade, and also because of the Falls!  The camera returned again and again to the falls and the churning water that once powered the many mills of Paterson.  My car is old and my eyesight isn't great (I have trouble reading street signs) so I don't know if I will be getting there any time soon, but I feel as though Jim Jarmusch took me to Paterson in a way more profound that an actual physical visit.

Also, I cannot leave this review without mentioning Marvin, the English bulldog, a powerful character in the movie in his own right.  They should give an Oscar to animal actors and Marvin should get one for his nuanced performance.

Go see this movie and be enchanted both with a fascinating and historic city in our state, and for the pure Art of the Film!  You can find it at the Carmike Ritz, Voorhies, NJ (Haddonfield Berlin Road).