Paranoid Park

The plot was interesting enough, the characters were believable, and the acting was tolerable. I could have given this film 5 stars if it were 15 min instead of 84. If you enjoy modern art museums and are especially affected by random splashes of paint on a canvas, then this movie will not waste 69 min of your life. This is, by far, the most boring film van Sant has ever made. My wife nodded off within 20 min of the start, and I had to force myself to find reasons to actually complete all 84 min. Also, before anyone accuses me of being an action film junkie unable to assimilate intricate character development and plot execution, I'm far from that. See some of my other reviews.

**** 2007. Based on Blake Nelson's Paranoid Park and written and directed by Gus Van Sant. 60th Anniversary Prize in Cannes in 2007. A young skateboarder kills by accident a security guard. During the next days, he will try to find a way to formulate his guilt-feelings. Another movie about American teens by one of the most important modern American directors. By mixing Super 8 and 35 mm footage, making space go to pieces with multiple cameras filming the same scene and time by adopting a non linear narration line, Gus van Sant doesn't choose the easy way to galvanize our curiosity. I thank him for that. Highly recommended.

I saw this film on a zone 2 DVD, collector edition, available at Amazon.fr.

Paranoid Park is Gus Van Sant's twelfth feature film, and the third in his recent films about disaffected youth. Adapted from a novel by Portland writer Blake Nelson and obviously inspired by Crime and Punishment, Paranoid Park follows the life Alex, a local skate punk who gets tangled up in a grisly accident.

The thin plot has Alex, played by Gabe Nevins, attracted to Paranoid Park, a skate park that was built illegally by punks, skaters, and other riff raff. Alex goes there one night alone, and is essentially picked up by some shady characters. Without spoiling anything, he does something terrible and spends the rest of the movie trying to cope, mainly by writing out what happened in a letter to one of his friends. Paranoid Park represents a place where Alex feels that he can belong. He expresses how much he's attracted to the type of people who skate there, and he yearns to belong to their subculture, yet he never manages to find his place.

His writing literally drives the plot, as what he's writing down in his letter is what we experience as an audience. The focus of Paranoid Park is decidedly insular. Built around a series of disorienting techniques like dialogue overlaid with music, one sided dialogues where the other person is either obscured or off camera all together, long takes of Alex walking alone with a musical backdrop, and close-ups of Alex's blank stare, Alex's inner life is shown as a sort of dreamy and hazy numbness. His disaffection and guilt is not really expressed very effectively even in his diary, and the visual techniques of the film serve as one of the only windows in to his mind set.

Just like Elephant and Last Days, Van Sant is concerned with the seemingly existential existence of modern young people. Not only is Alex not coping too well with his deed despite his journal confession, he's also not coping with his parents divorce, and not coping with his superficial and sexual forward girlfriend. He can't express himself at all. A breakdown of language is a well trodden theme in existential literature, and the characters in Paranoid Park don't do a whole heck of a lot of communicating. Particularly evident is Alex's trouble communicating with the females in his life. He can't talk to his mother, whose face isn't even seen except as a hazy outline, he can't talk to his girlfriend Jennifer and feels nothing towards her, or his friend Macy who urges him to open up, yet he can't bring himself to share his secret with her even if it would have helped. Alex doesn't share his feelings or what happened, and he ends up being a depressed and blank teenager who'll end up being a dysfunctional adult, just like his parents.

Paranoid Park works well as an experimental take on a Crime and Punishment style story about inner torment. Most of the actors were found on myspace with the exception of Taylor Momsen as Alex's girlfriend Jennifer, who surprisingly enough plays a sexual forward young girl on Gossip Girl. Nevins is good as Alex, who's main job is to act like a typical teenager and to show off a numbed exterior. The acting isn't stellar but it's authentic enough. There might be a bit too much of the solitary slow motion shots of Alex, and maybe a bit too much style or substance with all of the arty and experimental camera work. When Van Sant shows us the fifth or sixth slow motion walking shot of Alex overlayed with Elliott Smith or Nino Rota it got a little tiresome. The pace is also very slow, which might turn off some folks wanting a more driven plot.

This is Van Sant's best effort in a long time, and it's definitely worth seeing if you can tolerate a little introspection and a slow pace.

Paranoid Park is an unpredictable, fresh film from Gus Van Sant that tells the story of introspective-teen Alex's struggles with life as he gets involved with the killing of a train station security guard. The whole film hitches on the performance of its star, Gabe Nevins; fortunately, Nevins is in just about every scene of the movie. Nevins is an absolute newcomer to movie-acting, but he works perfectly here. Every scene that he's in, the viewer is completely captured in his quiet, emotional turmoil. Nevins' big, beautiful, sulky eyes tell a story all their own. He's wonderful.

Unfortunately, the other young actors are not so comfortable or capable in front of the camera. They are genuine enough though for it to be forgiven though. The real problem here is Van Sant, who's cinematography is trying far too hard to "look" independent. The goofy camera angles and Van Sant's trademark moving-angle/moving-actor camerawork seem un-natural and distract from developing the characters more (which is where more focus was needed). The story jumps forwards and backwards in time so much that sometimes you don't know when you are, but once you've figured the chronology out, that's not a big complaint for me.

Overall, the film is a success. It's a reasonable enough story with interesting characters that's well-held-together by an amazing and fresh young performance by Gabe Nevins (just watching him is reason enough to see this movie). As a bonus, the material he's acting out is unique and interesting. A solid thumbs-up purchase for me. Hopefully we see more of this young actor in the future.

Alex, the narrarator and protagonist of "Paranoid Park", is not your typical romanticised culluloid teen. He is quiet, introspective, and near mute when it comes to verbalizing his feelings. He is the antithesis of a sullen, vapid adolescent skater. On the contrary, I found his parents to be vapid. When he speaks to them, what they say hardly makes an impact, because their efforts to really get through to him are ineffective. It's like carrying out an inane conversation with a stranger in which nothing is really said. Pleasantries are exchanged, but little beyond superficial subjects is broached.
The aftershock of a gruesome accident has left Alex shell-shocked. The entire film is about the way guilt haunts him like a shadowy executioner. Close-ups of his friends' faces emphasize the way he searches their expressions for the slightest hint of accusation. Alex lives in a world that offers little joy. His parents are getting divorced, and he has dislocated himself to the lonely confines of a journal. The journal is his confidante, his only witness to paralyzing emotions that stalk him during his waking hours.
Alex's character is not glorified in any way. He is awkward like most teens, he is not an expert skateboarder, and is reluctant to venture down the concrete slopes of the skate park carved under a colossal bridge. He is drawn toward Paranoid park because he seeks something resembling companionship and family. Jumping a boxcar leads to a fatal and grisly accident. Alex must live with the consequences of this mistake, which leads to intriguing questions about morality and the complexities of unintentional manslaughter. Gus Van Sant is not interested in the cogs of the judicial system, however, he is interested in the tormented machinery ticking away inside the young skater's head. Every aspect of reality is overshadowed by shame.
A scene in which Alex dissociates in a hot shower was compelling because every part of his body seemed to be weeping, except for his eyes, as if they were afraid to betray his secret. He wanders through gloomy rooms, turning on lights almost as an afterthought. When he has sex with his girlfriend, he does so in a stupor. Immediately afterward, she gets up and brags to her friend on the phone that it was "fantastic". To Alex it did little to penetrate the numbness soaking his body. A nimble detective questions him in a way that makes him suspect if he is found guilty, a vast nothing will swallow him. Faces and eyes and vague gestures judge him at every opportunity. Bizarre music in the background informs us that Alex is supposed to be feeling happy or sad, but his facial expression remains flat; incapable of smiling.
Gabe Nevins is an expressive actor who captures Alex's blank affect perfectly. He has an extremely difficult task in trying to capture Alex's mental state through posture and facial expressions, rather than simple words. His relationships with family and friends are so meaningless he has no one to confess to, so he buries his suffering to keep from being injured by emotions that are unfamiliar and threatening. Many will complain that the film moves at a snail's pace, but I think this is intentional: the director is submerging us in Alex's psyche, his dread and depression making situations slog by as if mired in quicksand.