A bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, writes poems in a notebook between shifts. That's more or less the whole plot of Jim Jarmusch's Paterson, with Adam Driver as the driver-poet and Golshifteh Farahani as Laura, his endlessly enthusiastic wife. It premiered at Cannes in May 2016, reached US cinemas that December through Amazon Studios and Bleecker Street, and critics adored it: Rotten Tomatoes counts 96% of reviews as positive, and Metacritic gives it a 90.
What critics loved
Driver came first for most of them. Peter Travers at Rolling Stone called the film "a small miracle" and praised a performance he found lived-in and lyrical, while Jamie Graham, reviewing from Cannes for GamesRadar+, described Driver's turn as full of calm and warmth.
Just as many critics were won over by how little happens. Chris Nashawaty at Entertainment Weekly admitted the film could sound dull on paper, then said it's anything but, finding a hushed beauty in an ordinary life. Justin Chang at the Los Angeles Times saw the film as a kind of poem in itself, full of clever allusions and wordplay, and called it serene and beguiling. David Edelstein, writing for New York magazine's Vulture, said he'd never seen a film capture an artist's inner world with such delicacy.
Longtime Jarmusch fans got extra praise. Todd McCarthy at the Hollywood Reporter described it as almost startlingly undramatic, with quiet rewards for people who've followed the director's career, and Eric Kohn at IndieWire called it Jarmusch's voice at its purest, with a brilliantly cryptic ending.
Where critics split
There wasn't much pushback, and most of it was about the film's gentle, tidy world. Edelstein, for all his praise, felt the town looked too pretty and unreal, closer to a Wes Anderson dollhouse than the real Paterson, and said it bordered on twee. Graham worried at first that its careful, repetitive structure might come across as smug, or that it was quietly mocking its characters, before deciding it wasn't. Travers warned that it takes its sweet time before it gets its hooks in.
The consensus
Critics saw Paterson as one of Jarmusch's finest films and a career-best showcase for Driver, which puts it high on the QC scale, a notch below perfect only because of those small grumbles about its tidiness. Fun lands lower because this is a slow, quiet, plotless film by design. The reviews agree it's a pleasure to sink into, but it rewards patience rather than offering thrills.
Sources
- Newser: Poetic Paterson is a 'small miracle' (Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone)
- Wikipedia: Paterson (film)) (Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, New York magazine, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic)
- GamesRadar+: Paterson reaction, Cannes 2016 (Jamie Graham)