Paranoid Park
An unsolved murder at Portland's infamous Paranoid Park brings detectives to a local high school, propelling a young skater into a moral dilemma where he must deal with the consequences of his own actions. As director of My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting, To Die For and Elephant, Gus Van Sant has created some of the most memorable stories about youth ever committed to film. New York Press says Paranoid Park boasts "the coolest pop score since Pulp Fiction " and the film was shot by the acclaimed cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love, The Quiet American). Paranoid Park also features a cast of hot newcomers including Gabe Nevins and "Gossip Girl's" Taylor Momsen.
It's hard to believe that a middle-aged filmmaker can fully evoke the chaotic, anxious world of a troubled teenager, but that's what Gus Van Sant has done with Paranoid Park. Alex (newcomer Gabe Nevins), a teenaged boy whose parents are going through a difficult divorce, is drawn to the rough community that's built up around the titular skateboarding park in Portland, Ore. One night, when an older boy is showing him how to hop a freight train, Alex accidentally kills a security guard. The movie captures the before and after by looping back and forth in time, focusing far more closely on Alex's state of mind than the investigation that threatens to close around him. Filmgoers leery of the drawn-out, atmospheric sequences of Van Sant's recent films (like Gerry and Last Days) need not fear; though Paranoid Park favors mood over plot, it successfully balances character, mood, and story, resulting in considerable dramatic tension, similar to Van Sant's meditation on the Columbine shootings, Elephant. This is not a thriller; Paranoid Park pays as much attention to Alex's relationship with his girlfriend Jennifer (Taylor Momsen, Gossip Girl) as to the killing. The result is a vivid, compelling portrait of adolescence, in all its messiness and confusion. This may be Van Sant's best film since his early masterpieces, Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. --Bret Fetzer
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Paranoid Park Reviews
Gus Van Sant has a lot of loyal followers. I haven't seen a lot of his movies, but I've seen a handful (I think about 5 or 6) and while I appreciate his keen eye and directorial visions, I don't really sink into his work like so many others. I remember the first time I saw `Elephant'. It was such a conflicting experience, and I feel that way about a lot of his work. `Paranoid Park' is a lot like `Elephant' in ways, but for me (and maybe it's because, having seen `Elephant' and pondered it immensely) this film understands the awkwardness a little better and thus relays a deeper, more rapturous message.
The film tells the story of a teenager named Alex who happened to visit a skate park called Paranoid Park on the night a security guard was killed. He's interrogated by police (as are every other skater in the school) but he hides his involvement in the killing. His guilty conscience begins to erode his persona, distancing him from those he loves and those closest to him.
He's falling apart.
I mention an awkwardness on the outset of this review, and what I mean by that is this naturally stiff feeling of teenage angst that runs through each frame. The narration is poor to a profit, for the stumbled reading portrays the emotionally confused state that Alex finds himself. The conversations all read true (even when they appear pointless, there is a point) and the plot unraveling is marvelously textured from start to finish. Some have concluded that this film is a gay allegory, and I can totally see that. I don't think that Alex is gay (his separation from his girlfriend is most definitely a part of his emotional confliction due to his current state) but I do feel that the undertones are there. This film is very much about concealing something you feel will ostracize you and the pain that comes from that concealment. Beings that Van Sant is a gay man, I can see his influence and personal story bleeding into this films moral core.
Using regular kids (newbies to the business) to play the parts here was a major plus. They seem uncomfortable in their own skin, and that isn't something you can readily display unless, well, you are uncomfortable in your own skin.
For me, the anticlimactic ending is perfection. When reviewing `Elephant' I mentioned that the film was basically designed to make you feel nothing about the killings. You walked away void of feeling. `Paranoid Park' is similar in that you can feel the coldness (and true testament to the moral state of society today) but there is an emotional resonance that truly connects the audience to Alex here. Alex is not void of feeling. His breakdowns are strong and passionate. He feels the consequences of his actions so profoundly that the final frames, that fire, burn brightly as a loud statement, reigning in our personal feelings and delivering a severe blow to our consciences. We are brought into his world and brought to his level and then suddenly we are left contemplating whether what Alex concludes is what we would have concluded.
It's stunning.
The strength of the film is its attempt to genuinely portray teenage apathy, relationships, and communication, all of which admittedly are often mis-portrayed in mainstream Hollywood films. But its strengths end there in my opinion. Some of the characters' actions feel forced or exaggerated, as if the viewer is incapable of discerning something in between black and white. Ironically though, the many (I would say way too many) musical interludes are wide open for interpretation, and come across as time fillers more than insight into the story or characters. There are two parallel stories in the film. The first is the accidental death of a security guard and the second is the main characterâ(tm)s realization that long-term relationships are based on more than physical attraction. In the end though, I felt this film came up short on both fronts. Neither story was fully developed and instead the viewer feels left out like the parent of an apathetic teenager.
Had Paranoid Park been performed by a less capable cast of actors it may have disappointed. However, given the fine ensemble of talent, this film triumphed.
Gabe Nevins' impressive performance validated a principal tenet of acting which stresses the inestimable value of well-appointed facial expressions.
The quasi-documentary style of filming infused the movie with a quality somewhere between true-grit and surreal, beginning with Detective Lu's (played impeccably by Danny Liu)snappy interrogation of Alex (Gabe Nevins).
If Paranoid Park contained any weaknesses at all, the film's vague ending might warrant that distinction.
This is one of Gus Van Sant's greatest films, and it has yet to leave my mind since seeing it months ago. It tells a powerful story about feelings of guilt, and in ways you would not expect. It is eye opening and it is powerful film-making at its finest.
Paranoid Park could arguably be Van Sant's retelling of Dostoyevsky's seminal Crime and Punishment; it is an intimate examination of a murderer, and the undertaking of guilt and societal disconnect. It follows the memories of Alex, a high school skateboarder in Portland, as they are told to us through his narration; something is irking him, and he is using the power of the narrative story as a mode of catharsis. He describes a local skate park, an illegally built array of concrete structures known as Paranoid by the skater kids, as the Eden of his adolescent dreams; his aspirations entail acceptance among his boarding cohorts, and being deemed `good enough' for Paranoid.
We then find ourselves following Alex directly inside his memories, as we start jumping back and forth through time. But we learn what is causing Alex's guilt when he has an interrogation with the local police detective, Liu, and we discover that a security guard has been murdered. A scream briefly flits into the soundtrack, indicating a troubled connection in Alex's memory, and now we realize that he is involved in the killing.
What follows is a landscape of heavy emotion as the stream of Alex`s thoughts spill into the actual filmic form; the weight of Alex's conscious takes the form of a deconstructed linear narrative of storytelling, a rich soundscape that portrays the sea of the mind's noise, and punctuations of skateboarding kids (which we later find out are the audition tapes of the actors playing Alex and his friends). The people that fill Alex's life are interestingly realized characters; his best friend Jarrod, the mentor and cause of his downfall Scratch, his strangely `other' girlfriends Macy and Jennifer, and the aforementioned detective.
This is a film about memory, and therefore, about history and historiography of the self. Van Sant approaches 'remembering' from a very unique perspective in order to tell the story, harkening back to concepts De Certeau expressed about the telling of history. As Alex himself states, "I didn't do very well in creative writing, but I'll get this all on paper eventually." The narrative is fragmented; events are not placed in logical order on a linear timeline, scenes are frequently repeated in differing ways, and sequences are reconstructed with unraveling detail as the `plot thickens;' the entire movie functions as re-enacted pieces of thought. The opening presents this skewed vision of storytelling in showing our hero, Alex, beginning to write the story (the history) of the events at hand. And he is writing in pencil, which leaves room for error and correction; `rewriting.' But even the scenes of him writing the story we are seeing are situated along with the rest of the sequences as pieces of a larger memory; one has to wonder when, in fact, the 'present' of the film is. The film harkens to ideas we all struggle with over time: our remembering, our remembered.
From a thematically critical perspective, this is a film dealing with the concepts of narratological understanding; the idea that time is not linear, that it can be fragmented and non-sequential like memory and thought. It is an example of mannerist mise-en-scene; the style is not motivated by the subject matter, but in its own justification. And though not the first time dealing with these ideas, it is Gus Van Sant's finest approach, and it demonstrates the craftsmanship embodying his work.
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