Michael Sicinski’s review published on Letterboxd:
[7]
I can never
have enough Jarmusch in my life.
His films are like the matches
situated in the back
of a junk drawer
in the corner of the kitchen.
I don't always need them.
Sometimes -- a lot of the time
-- I'm in need of sturdier stuff.
Hard 16mm Kodachrome frames
containing light like iced tea
in a pitcher
with the sun glinting through.
Or the murkier smudges of factory walls
from some Eastern European backwater,
smokestack stained and almost comically
awash in weeds.
But then I remember DEAD MAN,
the way Neil's guitar chimed across the war
painted face of William Blake
"like a god damn religious icon,"
or Isaac striped across the sky
in THE LIMITS OF CONTROL
("the one nobody likes")
a towering cancellation mark
against hope's assassination.
And now... this poet who drives a bus in New Jersey.
Hm.
I am not entirely convinced
that Paterson is real.
Usually in Jarmusch's movies
the artists make "art" when they are
simply following the rhythms
they cannot ignore --
the tug of old things
the samurai code
even an obsession for cupcakes.
There is something touchingly bare
about this autobiography,
this demonstration of making
as an unspectacular
workaday habit
but it is also a bit awkward
and simple and I wonder
if there was a part of Jarmusch that
wanted to leave the masters out
for the dog to mangle.
"I did it. It is done.
Moving on."