Paterson and the Scope of Creativity
“Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Driver in Paterson (2016).” IMDb , Amazon Studios & Bleecker Street, 2016. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5247022/mediaviewer/rm566955008 This post contains spoilers for the films Paterson and The Beach Bum. Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson (2016) is the story of a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey who is also named Paterson himself. It also happens to offer a depiction of two different primary creative processes—one belongs to Adam Driver’s Paterson and is deliberate, focused, and even cramped and the other belongs to Golshifteh Farahani’s Laura and is chaotic and sprawling. Driver’s character works on his poems in his spare time just before starting his bus run, during his lunch breaks, and sometimes during the evening in a small office in his basement. The film is ultimately a character study of him and his process. We see him study a package of Ohio Blue Tip Matches during breakfast one morning and then ...