In Jim Jarmusch's film "Patterson," Patterson, a bus driver who shares the same name in this small town adjacent to New York, lives day in and day out what ordinary people would consider boring and repetitive. Are we not ordinary people? In this impromptu poem of contingency everywhere, Patterson's seemingly neatly arranged mechanical life is like an interlaced lyrical stanza, which, in its regular rhythm, makes us meditate at the subtleties that bring of surprise.
"Patterson" is a departure from Jarmusch's more open-ended, rough-hewn narratives, and similar to Bella Tarr's "Old Horse of Turin," which uses seven days of the week to unfold the film's narrative. However, unlike "The Old Horse of Turin", which draws on the Bible and Genesis, the way in which "Patterson" depicts the passage of daily time does not have a sense of religious ritual. In the film, Jarmusch does indeed create a time-cycled regulation. but Patterson did not passively accept mediocrity. It is precisely his choice that makes us gradually realize that ordinary does not mean surrendering to life.
To be precise, “Patterson” describes the waves in a silent space. It is indeed as rigorous as a sonnet, but Jarmusch still ignores the rules and yearns for change. Patterson's encounter with the girl who writes poetry in the film is an important moment, especially their conversation about poetry. The girl is very eager to read a poem to Patterson, but she regrets that the poem does not rhyme very much. But Patterson replied, "It's okay, I prefer the unrhymed one." Obviously, it's not just the form that matters.
Interestingly, the girl who wrote the poem isn't the only twins featured in the film. At the beginning of the film, wife Laura tells Patterson about a dream she had in which she had twins. In the days that followed, the twins would always appear in Patterson's field of vision, but Jarmusch was by no means trying to create stereotypes by coincidence. The image of the twins, on the one hand, reflects Patterson's obsession with a certain recurring imagery, and on the other hand adds a touch of magical realism to this film that depicts everyday life.
As once recited by the New York school poet William Carlos Williams, Paterson, who shares its name with the city, is always full of keen sensibility and natural lyric talent, just like the city itself. Therefore, such a genius does not need to create an unrealistic romantic atmosphere at all when living with his wife. Jarmusch has no interest in the clever literary tone, but no one will deny that "Patterson" is romantic.
In contrast to the taciturn Patterson, wife Laura seems to have a better grasp of the joys of modern life, so it is not surprising that she produced most of the romantic moments of ordinary life. In the film, Laura isn't simply sanctified as the supreme muse, but she's by no means a boring housewife either. What makes her attractive is that she is ordinary and innocent, but has flesh and blood, and always keeps looking forward to the life to come.
I've always felt like Laura was a settled gypsy who, while she didn't complain about her marriage, was always fantasizing about being a bohemian stray singer. At the same time, that's why she's content with making artisan cakes and passionate about wild pie decorating styles.
For the most part, however, Patterson lived in his own reverie. Except for the communication with his wife, Patterson in the film basically has no friends. Although he will have a habit of chatting with the owner of the tavern, don't forget that he always has a drink alone. Perhaps precisely because Patterson has few friends, every character who happens to appear in his life seems to be of vital importance. It's true that Patterson seems used to being alone, but that's not to say he's not interested in people.
An obvious example is his curiosity to eavesdrop on the conversations of his passengers—whether it's a little black boy chatting about boxer "Hurricane" Carter, or a teenage boy's daydream about pretty girls. , or the rhetoric of a radical student—it always got him thinking, and he seemed to really discover the flame of passion burning beneath the calm waters.
Indeed, Patterson lacks a sense of identity with the new and has a rhetoric about his monastic way of life—did he not live well in the centuries before the mobile phone? But he is not just blind to the rapid changes in modern society. Remember the scene where he walked through the laundry room? Remember the admiration he showed for the way black youth found rap inspiration?
"Patterson" has many issues with artistic inspiration, but Jarmusch is not a mystic in this regard. Art is not a mysterious thing, a Paterson bus driver can also be a poet, as long as you can penetrate the mysteries of daily life, you can find inspiration in a matchbox.
There is no doubt that Jarmusch himself has full respect for the group of artists, otherwise it is difficult to imagine how he shaped Patterson's unique artist character. Just as Patterson never admitted that he was a poet, Jarmusch himself only modestly claimed that "I am a half-hearted artist" in an interview with the French "Cinebook" and believed that film directors are fundamentally It's half-baked, you need to know a little bit about everything. Also in this magazine, about half a century ago, Godard wrote that "movie is Nicholas Ray".
In the film industry, the homage to Nicholas Ray has always been there. Remember which movie Mia watched when she was dating Sebastian in La La Land? It's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) by Nicholas Ray! Of course, who knows if they were drawn to James Dean's charisma? As a young man, Jarmusch had been an assistant to Nicholas Ray for the last two years of his life, and Ray always said, "If you want to make movies, don't just study movies, because in movies there's everything. "
Poetry abounds in "Patterson," but Patterson in the film doesn't just delve into poetry. It is the patience and enthusiasm for everyday life that makes Jarmusch's films so interesting. The most moving thing about the film is that I found Patterson, despite his talent, seemingly indifferent to it all. When he saw his notebook full of poems being torn apart by the bulldog, we too seemed to detect despair in his eyes for the first time. But if it weren't for that "non-caring" insight, he wouldn't have come back at the end of the film because of his communication with a Japanese tourist.
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