Paterson and Love & Mercy - New Angles on the Creative Process

Presenting the creative life on screen has always been difficult.  Films tend to focus on domestic disputes and personal demons rather than on the work itself which is often slow, disjointed and repetitive.  There is more dramatic potential in showing Jim Morrison being arrested for exposing himself rather than in scenes in which he and the other Doors run through ‘L.A. Woman’ for the hundredth time in some sweaty studio. And few novelists (Hemingway and Jack London being two of them) have led outwardly adventurous lives; most of them have more in common with Emily Dickinson, living quiet, deskbound existences.  As a result, films often skirt around the process that consumes much of the artist’s day. 

                Two recent films that have made admirable stabs at showing the workings of the creative mind are Love & Mercy and Paterson.  While there is plenty of friction between the main characters in Love & Mercy, the most compelling scenes take place in the studio where Wilson commits to tape the lush, technicolor sounds we can hear swirling around in his mind.  To give the viewer some idea of what it might be like inside that acid-drenched head, the film opens with a plethora of sounds in the form of rays of light pouring and in and out of darkness.  It’s a brilliant evocation of torrential creativity.

                In much the same way, the lingering camerawork in Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson replicates the intensely deliberate gaze of the eponymous bus driver and aspiring poet played by Adam Driver.  By the end of the film, we have a variety of objects firmly lodged in our minds – a matchbox, a beer glass, a waterfall – that he has meditated upon as a first step in turning them into poetry.  With its repetitive structure – seven days divided by the same tasks and activities with just a few surprises – and its overwhelmingly quiet, unhurried mood Paterson reminds us that poetry is a slow, still art that rejects the loud and the showy and celebrates what’s quietly there.   As a result, it makes for a life-affirming viewing experience.