Review of Paterson

I watched this film first time alone and second time with my wife. First watching left me in a mellow and fairly content mood: a film with likeable characters, no conflicts, no violence. But there was something inexplicable, something I could not point my finger at. After the second watching and extensive discussions with my wife (to whom I owe much of this review) I am seeing this film as a story of people, whose lives are somewhere else. Nobody in this film is revealing his or her feelings - except Everett but then, he is an actor and we do not know, whether he is acting or not as he is expressing his love. Paterson and Laura exchange words but never discuss. Laura is portrayed as perhaps lovable but utterly superficial and she is seen working on the surface of curtains, clothes and cupcakes. Even the looks of her new guitar seem to be more important than its sound. We witness Laura baking and learning to play guitar but both activities are instrumental, offering her the opportunity for money or fame. She praises Paterson for his poetry but she seems more infatuated with the idea of poetry than his poems; in fact, I got the impression that she had never read any of his poems. Paterson recites two poems for her: one was by William Carlos Williams and the other by the girl he met by accident, none of his own poems. Paterson listens to people discussing but he does not want to be engaged in any discussions. These discussions seem to be about local heroes (Costello, the anarchist etc) who were able to get away from the town of Paterson, unlike characters in the film. When two young men were actually discussing their own lives and encounters with girls, we learn that both of them were too scared to do anything that would have changed their lives. When one of the characters, Donny the bus depot supervisor, directly tells him of his life and his problems, Paterson doesn't seem to be at all interested. When Paterson goes to the bar to drink his daily beer, he sits by the counter, instead of sitting with the other customers, although he probably knows everyone pretty well. So a film about ordinary but lovable people and poetry in mundane details turned out to be a horror story about people, who are afraid of their own shadows and who exchange platitudes instead of communicating with each other.