Overview
This poem praises and reflects on scenes involving rain in the movies. The scenes mentioned seem to fit with the A style of cinema marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. genre in cinema with their pessimistic and bleak outlook.
The speaker begins by listing film openings that are full of anticipation before describing what happens after the action and "the blame" takes place.
By choosing films as his initial subject matter, Paterson plays with the idea of reality and the imaginary. To what extent do films relate to our own realities? Does the female figure who appears in the early stanzas refer to someone specific or to a Hollywood A character in fiction who represents a particular type of person or symbolises a particular human experience - like the 'victim'. Archetypes should be recognisable to all readers.? Rain itself begins the poem as an effect used to create atmosphere in films, but by the end adopts an almost religious significance.
none of this, none of this matters.
Rain is the last poem in Paterson's collection of the same name, which gives the final line more resonance. We might wonder whether, by this, he means the poem itself, or even the collection as a whole. Paterson is once again a philosopher, leaving us questioning our belief systems and what it is to be human.