A very human film

Jarmusch’s Paterson is a response to his own Only Lovers Left Alive. The former film’s ennui and darkness rebutted with this film’s many passions and light. The emotional malaise of Only Lovers is met with the many positive relationships shown in Paterson. Paterson’s living streets of Paterson is set against the dead streets of Detroit (an apt Waste Land). The two are tied by a number of visual devices (many of the books from Eve’s library are in Paterson’s, both film frequently return to walls of photographs of famous figures, repeated overhead shots of the couples in bed, etc.), as well as thematic ones. What Jarmusch has ultimately done with Paterson that makes it so fascinating is that he has made a counter to himself and thus set up stereo perspectives of optimism and pessimism of modern America. http://www.cutprintfilm.com/reviews/pff-25-paterson/