Jim Jarmusch‘s “Paterson” is one of the very best films from this year’s Cannes Film Festival (our review). It’s a cinematic poem that beats with idiosyncratic Jarmusch-ian rhythms, with the perfectly cast Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani as a couple living in Paterson, New Jersey. Finding the profound in the simple everyday around every corner, “Paterson” is layered with patterns, symbolism, comical repetitions, and a gamut of cultural references. Most of these are directly related to Paterson, the place, while others have a quiet and endearing effects on Paterson, Driver’s bus driver/secretive poet of the story.
It’s through these cultural references that “Paterson” waters its seeds, exposing tiny truths about the essence and purity found in the artistry of the everyday. The books in Paterson’s basement reveal the inner world he surrounds himself while he writes in his secret notebook, stuff like David Foster Wallace‘s “Infinite Jest” and John Krokidas‘ screenplay for “Kill Your Darlings,” a film about the Beat Generation. There’s a cameo referencing Jarmusch’ close ties with the hip-hop scene. Iggy Pop also gets mentioned in the bar Paterson frequents, playing into the motif of doubling: within the context of the film itself and whether he deserves to be on the bar’s hall of fame wall, and outside the context as a little wink to Jarmusch fans anticipating the director’s documentary on The Stooges, “Gimme Danger” (also playing in Cannes).
Within the plethora of interwoven conversations and dropped names, there are 5 cultural references I found to be especially interesting, surprising and memorable — one of which is admittedly obvious and too big to ignore. With that, here’s a sort of guide to understanding the cosmos Jarmusch builds in his latest gem.
5. Emily Dickinson
Who was she: American poet who was mostly a total shut-in and recluse during her lifetime, never reaching any fame and constantly boxed in by her time’s backwardly misogynistic ways. Long after her death, she became one of the most famous and studied American poets in the world.
What’s her role in the film: Dickinson gets mentioned when Paterson meets a little girl, who, like him, writes her poetry in a secret notebook (the one she reads to Paterson is titled “Water Falls”). As she’s about to leave, she asks him if he’s a fan of Dickinson’s to which he replies that he is, very much so. “Huh, what do you know,” she smiles, “a bus driver who likes Emily Dickinson.” Not only is there subtle depth of Dickson’s role as an inspiration to young girls, but Dickinson’s own introverted and fixated passion is used here to parallel Paterson’s. The little girl is one of the many twins that appears in the film as well, establishing the linked duality between generations of perhaps a future poet, talking to a present one, bonding over one from America’s past.
4. Giuseppe Ciancabilla
Who was he: Italian anarchist from the 1890s, who emigrated from Italy to Paterson, New Jersey — a place of refuge for Italian anarchists at the time.
What’s his role in the film: It’s in one of the conversations that Paterson eavesdrops on while driving the bus, when a girl tells a boy Ciancabilla’s story and how he was involved in plotting the assassination of Italy’s King, Umberto the II. There are so many layers to peel in these two to three minutes, it’s swooning; Paterson’s history of being a stronghold for anarchism and how there are none left nowadays (“besides us, of course” she quips), Paterson’s knack for learning and absorbing through observation and eavesdropping, and all that packaged in a sly meta-wink by having “Moonrise Kingdom” stars Jared Gilman and Kara Haywood play the young couple. Is Jarmusch coyly calling Wes Anderson an anarchist? Is true art just another branch of anarchism? Through it all, we get a sensationally delightful exchange and, along with Paterson, learn something most of us didn’t know. Oh, and if all that wasn’t enough, Ciancabilla is also one of many motifs alluding to worldly foreigners and artists travelling to Paterson, a building block for the ephemerally cosmic sense of place Jarmusch creates in the film.
3. Romeo and Juliette / Anthony and Cleopatra / Abbott & Costello
What were they: William Shakespeare plays, of course. ‘Romeo and Juliette’ and ‘Anthony and Cleopatra’ are grouped together with Abbott & Costello, the comedic duo from the ’40s and ’50s.
What’s their role in the film: In a single conversion that Paterson and his barman (Barry Shabaka Henley) have, all three get referenced as a way to compare one of the film’s subplots we gleefully get absorbed in; that of brokenhearted Everett (William Jackson Harper) and the woman he desperately wants to be with, Marie (Chasten Harmon). It struck me with significance not only because of Costello’s direct link to Paterson (as the most famous person to be born in the city, he’s mentioned more than once) but with the way Henley’s barman so effortlessly jumped from classic, timeless romantic Shakespearean stories of doomed tragic love to the shenanigans of Abbott and Costello; reinforcing the idea of dualities, adding humorous irony to poor Everett’s circumstances, and slyly reminding us that all art — whether it presents an academic standard or it’s broad mainstream comedy and feels terribly outdated — is all part of the same melting pot we call artistic expression.
2. “The Island of Lost Souls”
What was it: An old Hollywood classic from 1932, based on H.G. Wells‘ novel and starring Kathleen Burke as The Panther Woman.
What’s its role in the film: Paterson and Laura (Farahani) go to the movies and watch “The Island of Lost Souls.” Laura is completely absorbed while Paterson continues to observe life around him — noticing all the couples in the theatre. It’s the old American tradition of a dinner-and-a-movie, and prompts one of the greatest lines in the film when Laura looks at the poster right before going in and says, “It’ll be like going back to the 20th century!” After the film is over, he comments how Kathleen Burke looks like Laura while she, in turn, says that she loved it for being in black and white — the colors being something of an obsession with her throughout the film. It’s a fantastic reminder about how subjective all art is; each person connecting with a piece of work in their own, beautifully personal way. “The Island of Lost Souls” is also on a different planet than Jarmusch’s film in terms of style, totally fantastical and hyper-surreal, yet it serves its dutiful purpose as a memorable reference here. Ah, the glorious congruence of art.
1. William Carlos Williams
Who was he: Poet and doctor, William Carlos Williams famously wrote a volume of poems titled “Paterson” in the late ’40s and ’50s.
What’s his role in the film: The biggest one in terms of cultural references. Not only as a direct inspiration for Jarmusch who reads his work, but as the most prominent cultural reference in “Paterson” for all the obvious reasons. The duality of his name gets played around with (at one point, Paterson tells Laura that she’s thinking of “Carlo Williams Carlos”) and his book of poems becomes a key in one of the film’s many phenomenally simple conversations between Paterson and a Japanese visitor, who came to Paterson, New Jersey, because he’s such a big fan of Williams’ poem. Paterson’s own poetry about the most ordinary of objects is directly influenced by Williams’ but it’s also the latter’s life that Jarmusch uses as a significant jump-off to our understanding of his world. Like practically every poet who’s ever lived, Williams couldn’t make a decent living out of writing poetry and he enjoyed a long and reputable career as a doctor, which he loved just as much as the film’s Paterson loves driving the bus. Poetry breeds possibility, not for a luxurious standard of life but for something deeper, opening your eyes to the wonders of the artistic side that exists in all that life has to offer.
“Paterson” will open in the U.S. via Amazon Studios. No release date has been set.
Check out the rest of our coverage from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival by clicking here.
