Peter Bradshaw\u00a0\/ The Guardian<\/p>\n
S<\/span><\/span>lowly but surely, the gentleness of Jim Jarmusch\u2019s lovely new film steals up on you. It has an almost miraculous innocence. I can\u2019t remember when I last saw a movie whose adult characters had so much simple, unassuming goodness, goodness that breaks everything in the modern culture rulebook by going unironised and unpunished. And Adam Driver\u2019s face is something to fall in love with. An Easter Island statue reborn as a sensitive, delicate boy.<\/p>\n It is about a man called Paterson, played by Driver, who works in Paterson, New Jersey; the coincidence underscores his matter-of-fact hometown loyalty without any great emphasis, though it echoes a similar alignment in the epic poem of that name, and about that place, by William Carlos Williams. Paterson has evidently served in the US military and is now a bus driver. He is also a poet on his own time (an admirer of Williams, in fact), thoughtfully writing in a notebook during breaks. His simple, accessible verses appear on screen in squiggly handwriting as he works. He is not supposed to be a genius, but neither is his work hilariously awful or inadvertently revealing, as it might be in another type of film.<\/p>\n Paterson is very happily married to the beautiful Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) who stays at home, pursuing her talents: painting, decor, cooking. She begs Paterson for money so she can buy a guitar and pursue her dream of being a country singer. But again: this guitar does not bring the financial ruin or mortification that you might expect. The point is that Laura is rather good and her plans are not that implausible. At all times, we laugh the way Paterson laughs \u2013 with Laura, not at her.<\/p>\n In the evenings, Paterson walks their English bulldog Marvin and has a quiet beer where he chats with barkeep Doc (Barry Shabaka Henley) and helps sort out the unhappiness of some other bar regulars: young former lovers Marie (Chasten Harmon) and Everett (William Jackson Harper). And his life continues in its utterly happy, non-careerist way until he is confronted with a terrible loss, which appears at first comically absurd but is very serious.<\/p>\n This is a real place with real landmarks, yet Jarmusch can\u2019t help reconfiguring it into one of the unreal, ghost-town sites of his imagination. Paterson will walk streets that are weirdly uninhabited, except for sudden, startling cameo-apparitions. It is not that far from the ruined Detroit of his vampire fantasy Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) and Paterson\u2019s easy self-reliance is like Forest Whitaker\u2019s in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999).<\/p>\n There is a very real, nuanced moment when, listening in to his passengers\u2019 conversation, Paterson starts smiling at the machismo of a couple of bragging, sexist guys \u2013 but a female passenger frowns at them while getting off: Paterson sees that and thoughtfully corrects his own smirk.<\/p>\n