Paterson is a beautifully conceived, beautifully shot, and beautifully acted film that serves as a reminder of how sensitive and humane Jarmusch can be when he isnвЂ™t forcing the round peg of his vision into the square holes of popular culture. Like many of JarmuschвЂ™s more memorable films, Paterson is episodic, urban and filled with a wry melancholy over the isolation and strangeness of normal lives but Paterson uses those themes to explore the creative process as it plays out in the lives of normal people. It would have been easy for Jarmusch to unpack this tension in moral terms and so take a swipe at the culture of public performance created by social media but the view he adopts is actually far more nuanced in that it supports the poet who keeps beauty locked up inside his own head as well as the people who feel the need to вЂfake it till they make itвЂ™ creatively. There are many paths into an evocative film like Paterson but the one that caught my attention was the relationship between the poet who exists in an oppressively repetitive world where he is just happy to be a normal guy and the wife who spends her days trying to perform the identity of an artist only to have her true calling almost creep up on her. My FilmJuice review can be found over here. Just a dude who writes poetry and drives a city bus. No vampires, no spies, no cowboys, and no assassins. Unlike most of JarmuschвЂ™s recent films, Paterson comes without the sugar-frosting of genre tropes.

This week sees the home release of Jim JarmuschвЂ™s Paterson, his first film since 2013вЂ™s Only Lovers Left Alive (which I adored). This being said, Melody is a thoroughly excellent film from an era when the British film industry was still interested in making films that spoke directly to the experiences of British people. Dominated by profoundly not-famous tunes by the BeeGees, it feels way too folky and blandly up-beat for a film with the urban setting and realistic tone of a film like Melody. Interestingly, the weakest element of this film is probably the soundtrack that inspired its makings. As Ornshaw says, вЂњDonвЂ™t forget to change at Clapham Junction!вЂќ In a move that recalls the ending to both Tony RichardsonвЂ™s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and TruffautвЂ™s The 400 Blows, Melody ends with the protagonists running away from a world that they canвЂ™t escapeвЂ¦ because sometimes all you need for happiness is a bit of breathing room. However, as the film reaches its conclusion, opinions begin to shift as kids rally to the coupleвЂ™s cause and set about creating a world of their own. At first, these two thematic strands appear to be in conflict as nobody but Danny (and later Melody) believe that they should be in love or want to get married.

Filled with these lovely scenes in which the camera runs and runs as kids go about their normal daily lives, the film soon transitions into an utterly charming and genuinely moving love story between Danny and a little girl called Melody:Дespite being set in a recognisably socialist universe in which social class shapes both your identity and your hopes for the future, Melody is a deeply romantic film that wants to believe in the absolute power of love to remake the world. Made in the great tradition of British post-War social realism, Melody explores not only the dynamics of gentrification and middle-class вЂconcernвЂ™ for the lower orders but also the ways in which proximity and cooperation can work to establish solidarity between people from ostensibly very different backgrounds. Initially alienated from his class-mates, Danny soon manages to establish a friendship with a local lad whose home life is so horrifying that you never actually see it on screen. Set in 1970s East London, Melody begins by introducing the resolutely introverted and middle-class Danny to a working-class community that his shit-munching parents are hoping to gentrify. Bit late uploading this but FilmJuice have my review of Waris HusseinвЂ™s thoroughly excellent and recently re-released British drama Melody (also known as S.W.A.L.K.)

Melody 1971 filmaffinity