I hadn't been eager to see Paterson because if the trailer moves slowly, one might worry that the rest of the movie moved slower still. But I am so glad I did. It was slow indeed but poetic, as befits the rendition of the week of the bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, who is also a poet. His name also happens to be Paterson, and his icon is a former resident, the famous Poet and doctor, William Carlos Williams. Everything about the film is fluid, from when Paterson wakes up between 6:10 and 6:30 every morning, and places his watch on his wrist and cuddles his girlfriend and eats his glass of cheerios, and walks to his garage and moves through his day listening to the chatter of the riders, but also composing his poems in his head, or putting them down in his "secret book" by hand. His girlfriend wants him to publish, but at least to make copies of them. She is an artist of sorts herself, painting on fabric, a lover of triangular and circular patterns, and a lover of her bull dog, that Paterson tolerates and walks out of his affection for her. Nothing really happens in this film, and yet all of life happens in it. It made me appreciate the commonplace of my own life as I never have done.
There is a small progression from day to day, a bus break down, Paterson's meeting with a young girl waiting for her mother who also has a special book in which she jots her pre-adolescent poetry (which just happens to sound a great deal like the ones Paterson writes) and supporting his girl friend in her sudden decision to buy and play a guitar and to sell a massive amount of home made cupcakes at the local Farmer's Market. Every night when he walks Marvin, he stops at the local bar where other stories are unfolding. The bar owner has a love of the city Paterson's history and maintains an informal wall of pictures of and articles about people from there, including not only William Carlos Williams, but Lou Costello. Paterson is a quiet man, once a Marine (as was the actor Adam Driver), who nonetheless is content with the small, but not somehow not insignificant life, he leads. When the dog, Marvin, who grumbles and gurgles companionably throughout the movie, chews up Paterson's normally protected poetry journal, of which there is no copy, you can feel that Paterson is bereft and you sense that he just might give it all up. His only emotional outburst is to say to the dog, "I don't like you Marvin", before his girlfriend banishes Marvin to the garage. (A note: The dog who portrayed Marvin, named Nellie, apparently passed away after the making of the movie). But while he is sitting at the Great Falls of Paterson (never heard of them and I am from the East Coast), a Japanese tourist, who is a poet visiting the home town of William Carlos Williams, gives Paterson a blank note book. The man somehow knows that as for him, poetry is breathing for Paterson. And he begins again.
I felt an amazing sense of peace as I watched this movie. I felt like I was part of Paterson's moments, in time, with him. And so I end with "Another One", a poem from the film,
When you're a child you learn there are three dimensions
Height, width and depth
Like a shoebox
Then later you hear there's a fourth dimension
Time
Hmm
Then some say there can be five, six, seven. . .
I knock off work
Have a beer at the bar
I look down at the glass and feel glad
I felt glad as I watched this movie.
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