The director tries to recreate the everyday and poetic origin of a poet. Patterson, a bus driver with the same name as the city, is a military veteran who doesn’t use a smartphone and spends his days commuting, walking the dog, pubs, and writing poetry.
His love life (or private life, married life) is intertwined with enjoyment, feeling and even enduring, while the other half of his life is worldly, eager for real success and a fanatical pursuit of artistic appearance. The film deals with the emotions and strengths in a very subtle way, so light that it is almost non-existent, but it implies the most direct and strongest connection between the poet and reality.
The poet's job, the bus driver, deals with old buses, colleagues under pressure from reality, and passengers of all shapes and sizes. The old-fashioned buses provided him with a vision that was mobile and close to life, and would not be suspected of being seen as voyeurs, so he could experience the breathing of the city (Patterson), the transformation of light and shadow, and the collection of life fragments of passengers ( sporadic conversations, individual gestures); Patterson's colleagues can be seen as representatives of the reality of struggling with financial pressures, relationships, always bad, always unhappy, always a bunch of stuff; here are the An interesting comparison between buses and smartphones: Patterson drives a bus but refuses to use a smartphone. The former represents machinery and the latter represents intelligence. To a certain extent, it shows that the poet lags behind technological progress in reality. Of course, What the film expresses is not a backwardness but a rejection attitude. Later, the bus broke down, and Patterson had to use the smartphone as a tool, which also symbolized a kind of inevitability.
If private life (in the narrow sense mentioned above) and work are regarded as the necessities of a social person, then the bar (or similar public gathering place) provides the poet with more opportunities to experience life more deeply, and also brand the poet with regionalism , personal style imprint. There are people in the bar who are in love, some people break up, and some people go to the depths of their marriages; there are also newspaper clips from a long time ago, like other poets who have gone away in the time tunnel, they can only recall, ponder, miss, and maybe be able to talk - just speechless. Every time Paterson goes at night, the misty lights and streetscape of the bar also create a poetic possibility, such as a piece of land with fruit seedlings; after the poem was torn apart by a dog, Paterson passed by in the opposite direction. In the bar, the time is also switched to daytime, everything is dim and ordinary, and the ground is covered with fallen leaves, which contrasts with the cleanliness of the night.
Poems and Poets. Patterson and Laura have no children, but hope to have twins (though not explaining why they don't have children, it still implies the result of the combination of poetry and the mundane); later Patterson met a little girl on the way home, He is one of the twins, and he is also a poet. To be precise, he is creating poetry. The film affirms the attraction between poetry and poetry, and proves that poetry is at least not as heritable as biology. Gene. While passing by the public laundry, Patterson and Marvin heard a singer writing (song - popular or trying to be popular, somewhere between poetry and life, and here it is more poetry, so they are attracted Patterson), Patterson is hidden in the corner, Marvin is at the door - this shot is formally singing to the dog, the song is a good song or has the potential to be a good song, the only audience (formally, visually At the end of the film, Patterson went to the park where he usually wrote poems and had lunch where he could see the waterfall after his poem book was damaged. , he was in a state of losing his poetic sustenance and being entangled by the world. An exotic poet also came to this place, and came to the city of Paterson to see where those poets once lived, and came to Paterson The poet came to this most suitable place for writing poetry, and chatted with him about his poetic ideals and departure. The two poets meet and separate. The Japanese poet finally sent Patterson a blank book of poems: blank means more possibilities.
This Japanese poet likes to say "Aha!", which is very healing; he asked Patterson if he was a poet, and Patterson, who lost his poetry, denied it, but in the conversation, he unintentionally revealed a kind of heart that is high in mountains and rivers and hard to find. We cherish each other, so someone commented: "Chang Wei, you also said that you don't know martial arts!"
Marvin, the bulldog, secretly pushed the letterbox diagonally, he tore up the poetry book, when Patterson took him for a walk, a carload of people asked his price, and said that this bulldog is easy to be stolen, Patterson said, "That's true. Something to look forward to." Patterson was neither more alert nor more relaxed after being warned, just business as usual. At first glance, the Bulldog is a bit awkward. It doesn't seem to have any direct connection with Laura and Patterson. Laura is indulged in artistic dreams and success in life. Marvin belongs to Patterson. It is the least time to walk it and spend time with it. In this way, Marvin links Patterson and Laura: Marvin and Patterson are closer in spirit, but they spend the longest time with Laura. The pit bull was once one of the most aggressive breeds, and then gradually domesticated and became docile as one of the popular pet dogs. The director seems to be alluding to the process of Patterson's transformation from soldier to citizen. There are many interpretations of Marvin. Its tiny body would push or try to push down a mailbox that has nothing to do with walking. Although Patterson checked the mailbox every time, it was always empty. What was he waiting for, and what kind of connection method did the mailbox symbolize? It may be traditional, purely spiritual, an ideal.
Real life and poetic life also show a tug-of-war in Patterson, the most poetically possible embodiment. At the entrance and exit of life, next to the ideal sign, crowding (limitation), forming priority (priority, importance) and left and right (direction) choices will inevitably occur. Laura said: "Marvin, you took the place of Dad (Patterson)." If the bulldog is used to represent real life - eating, drinking and sleeping, Patterson represents the poet, poetry; at this time, it is in line with the rhythm of the film. The fact is that reality prevails. It makes sense for Marvin to secretly knock down the mailbox during the day. People who are busy in the daytime fall into the quagmire of life without knowing it (Marvin did it alone, and Laura, who was supposed to listen to poetry and supervise reality not to deviate from it) But it was dereliction of duty); when the poet returns in the evening, he tries to right the yaw of life, to right the reality that slides into nothingness and is essentially boring, but this is subconscious, subconscious, or unconscious. While the poet tries to force the mailbox to stand firmer, the ideal has shallow roots and is too easily shaken.
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