Adam Driver behind the wheel in “Paterson” (Photo by Mary Cybulsky)
I finally saw Jim Jarmusch‘s latest movie, “Paterson” with , last Sunday afternoon at the Fabian 8 Cinema, only movie theater left in the City of Paterson, New Jersey.
Adam Driver and Golshifteh Farahani in “Paterson” (Photo by Mary Cybulsky)
I have known the city for a long time, but can’t say I’m intimately acquainted with it.
Even so, I was hit with a strange feeling early in my viewing of “Paterson” that something wasn’t quite right — aside from the fact that the family bulldog, a male named Marvin, was a gender-bending role for a female named Nellie.
It was more than the occasional script misstep, like the reference indicating that that Driver’s character, Paterson, worked for the city when his bus is clearly marked NJ Transit, a statewide transit agency.
Some of the settings, while authentically gritty, reminded me of somewhere else.
Look familiar? This scene from the movie “Paterson” wasn’t shot in the movie’s namesake city. (Photo by Mary Cybulsky)
Take, for instance, Paterson’s walk home from the Paterson bus depot, which took him through a brick archway past a “Paterson” sign painted on the wall. Something about the location reminded me of the Garnerville Arts & Industrial Center just a couple of miles from my home in Rockland County, New York.
Click through to the jump for the photographic evidence.
Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? 