Paterson

Jim Jarmusch’s immersive follow-up to Only Lovers Left Alive chronicles a week in the life of Paterson (Adam Driver, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), a bus driver in the city of Paterson, New Jersey. He leads a homespun life that finds comfort in ritual: he rises each day at the same time, goes to work, and then comes home to his creative, adoring wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), whose ever-changing world of new projects and dreams dovetails happily with his. In the broader strokes, each day is the same, differing only in the details – but this regularity is underpinned by Paterson’s passion for poetry, in which he finds refuge for reflection.

A hit at the Cannes Film Festival, Paterson is both a searching study in aloneness and a celebration of the small wonders woven into the fabric of life.

Paterson, dir. Jim Jarmusch, France/Germany/USA 2016, 113 mins.