Paranoid Park

I've been a fan of Van Sant's films for a while now. I guess I could boil this interest down to the college influence. Art, in any form (but especially cinema), seems to resonate with my generation (1980's on). This film is the third in what I see as a three part series (the first two being Elephant and Last Days). All three surprisingly depict the attitude of the contemporary youth in a way that no other films have been able to do. I say surprisingly because it strikes me as odd that Van Sant would be able to so accurately capture the thoughts, feelings and attitudes of such a misunderstood generation. So often, parents of these children say such things as, "we did that when we were your age," or, "I can relate to what you are going through," but what these parents often fail to recognize is that although the things we encounter may be similar the times as Bob Dylan would say, "are a changin'." To capture the particular mindset of the youth of today is a feat in itself, but to do so and provide entertainment as well deserves at least a brief look.

The film Paranoid Park itself seems to capture this way of thinking better than the previous two films. What starts as a simple rant about the modern youth becomes so much more. At first, you might find yourself thinking that the movie is somber,or perhaps unrealistic as the circumstances of the action are strange, but as you continue watching it the message that is trying to be conveyed becomes clear. This could have been you. This could have been me. It could have been you child, or the kid down the street. The common themes of teen flicks of drugs, sex, and rock and roll are pushed aside to highlight the internal strife of the protagonist. The "emo" music and distinctive fashion of this generational subculture seem all too real, and in the end you are left feeling as the main character does: silent and alone. Is this a movie about hope? I'm not sure. What I am sure about is that it deserves a chance. Paranoid Park could best be described as a much needed break from mainstream cinema, but more important, a film that might just make you think.

I was fortunate enough to attend a cast and crew screening of Gus Van Sant's latest film, Paranoid Park. Having missed Last Days, Gerry, and seeing only bits and pieces of Elephant, I didn't really know what to expect as he sheepishly greeted the crowd, said his thank you's, and let the film roll. With all the criticism, both for and against these recent films, I prepared myself for meaningless long shots of people walking, eating, and various other moments that would quickly find their way to most editor's cutting room floors. Would I be held hostage by a director too much in love with his own shots, or witness the work of a director who could, at this point in his career, easily coast -- yet continues to redefine himself? Thankfully, it was the latter.

Paranoid Park is easily one of my favorite films of the year, second only to First Snow. Both share the same kind of slow, dreamy reverie I think mainstream audiences are put off by. Both are threaded by haunting scores that are inseparable from the film as a whole. The film feels like music on its own.

Park's story is about the death of a security guard in Portland's industrial district, very close to an infamous skate park named Paranoid Park. The film was shot entirely in Portland Oregon. Much like Van Sant's, Drug Store Cowboy, the director treats the various locales in Portland as a second character, showcasing the unique flavor of the city without coming across as a film commissioned by the Oregon tourist board.

The young lead in the film, Gabe Nevins, in what is perhaps his debut film role, has the uneasy task of carrying the film. He plays Alex, a shy skater type who has little interest in his parents, school, or his pretty girlfriend. His performance is commendable. In a role that could have come across as the typical Skater Boy we've all seen 100 times before, he comes off naturally, as a nervous boy who's uncomfortable in his own skin; A boy gripped by an internal struggle too personal to share with anyone. The film is ultimately about this struggle. His narration might strike many viewers as stoic and forced. I would have to disagree. I saw it as the voice of a boy nervously scribbling away at his journal — mistakes and all. The entire film has that raw type of quality.

While pleased with Nevins' performance, I can't say the same for two of the young female actresses in the film. Taylor Momsen, who plays Alex's girlfriend is awful. In contrast to Nevins' natural performance, Momsen comes off like a pretty teenager who's nervous about being watched. I've seen better acting at middle school dance recitals. In a long scene shared by the two, we hear nothing but music, this seemed less like an artistic decision and more like a creative way to tune out her distracting acting. Lauren McKinney, as Alex's friend, shows us an equally wooden performance.

The most impressive quality of Paranoid Park is the gorgeous cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Kathy Li. There is a rich, warm — almost vintage quality to the film. Mixing what looked like various stocks of Super 8, digital video, and 35 MM film, each location is bathed in its own outward charm. In a scene where Alex sits on the beach, the aperture flicks forward and backwards, letting light jerk around the lens. It fits the mood of the scene perfectly, like orchestral scratches on an old LP.

Overall, Paranoid Park is like a gorgeous and melancholy folk song. With my head still swirling from summer block busters like Transformers and Harry Potter, it was refreshing to watch a film with breathing room. Whether the many dreamlike shots are the result of a director (who edits his own film) unwilling to cut away from his favorite shots, or of an orchestrated effort to thread the film like a song and let the narrative drift in and out, I am in love with his effort and look forward to dreaming with him more.

Yours in Service, Robert Plastorm

This is another fine film by Gus Van Sant which sadly seems to have overlooked by most cinemas and cinema-goers where I live. I attended one of three screenings at an almost-deserted local art-house cinema in Southampton. For me, however, this short, low-key film left a deep-impression.

The non-narrative structure of the film means that the action on screen cuts back and forth in time around a central incident in which Alex, played by Gabe Nevins, causes the death of a security guard on a train track in Portland, Oregon, where the film is set. This shocking event is unveiled, appropriately enough, in the middle of the film. From very early it is more or less obvious what trouble Alex is in, so there is little sense of mystery about the film's events. However the non-narrative sequencing does allow for questions to float to the surface before explanations and elaborations begin to crop up later in the film, allowing the viewer to make connections and draw some conclusions for themselves. I quite enjoy this approach to story-telling although it does seem to be increasingly common (see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Memento, et al).

The cast, apparently consisting of local teenagers with little background in acting, turn in some fine performances, especially Gabe Nevins in the central role of Alex. Scenes in the film are interspersed with camcorder footage of teenagers skateboarding around Oregon, which is a novel touch and in keeping with the feel of Van Sant's films, which are realistic but more dreamlike than gritty.

A special mention should go to the soundtrack in Paranoid Park, which is one of the strongest features of this film. The music ranges from rock (the Revolts) through folk (Elliott Smith) to classical (Beethoven) and musique concrete (Robert Normandeau). My favourite use of music in the film is in the opening shots of skateboarders in the skate park (from which the film's title is taken). Warm electronic tones and burblings envelope a continuous slow-motion camera shot of skateboarders as they rove around the the curves and angles of the park and the effect is really quite magical. (Having said that, I think there are one too many slow-motion shots later in this film which seem somewhat suspicious when the running time is less than 90 minutes...)

Gus Van Sant's latest films have been some of the most idiosyncratic not just of his career but of independent film in America since 2000. He's jumped ship, momentarily, from the Hollywood machine (To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester) and made films like Gerry, Elephant and Last Days as sort of poetic essays on film (yes, very pretentious, but they are poetic at least). His latest, Paranoid Park, at least could be called as something more of a story-driven narrative than any of the others, but it's still with a lyrical beat, driven by a mix-and-match of 8mm skateboarding footage and the malaise of a teen caught in that very recognizable, almost atypical state of mind at that age. Only here, it's probably more of a quiet, detached malaise that has within it a soul that is being sort of killed away piece by piece by the secret he holds.

The teen is Alex (first timer Gabe Nevins), who was mostly responsible for the (very) grisly death of a security guard while he and a not-quite acquaintance from Paranoid Park's skating scene were riding carelessly along a slow-moving train. He shut it out of his mind, or tried to, until a police officer examining the case brought in photos of the deceased in a Q & A with all of the skaters at high school. This, pretty much, is the bedrock of the story, but aside from this it's the 'something' that is the story. The rest of the film shows this kid in a state of peril, but not of the sort that makes us think this is an immediate existential crisis. He feigns interest in a girlfriend (ditzy Jennifer played by Taylor Momsen), hangs out with his skater friends like Jared (also first-timer Jake Miller), and writes in a journal with a narration that's a mix of detached Travis Bickle and, well, awkward teen.

What interested me was a mood I found Van Sant, intentionally or otherwise, was working with. I kept thinking back to a work like Camus's the Stranger, which had its 'hero' Mersault as a figure who wasn't exactly passionate and just a few heart beats above dead fish. There's something in this kids eyes, in his lack of reaction and in those long moments right after the train track scene as he is under the shower faucet in slow-motion. Actually, there's a lot of slow-motion, sometimes of walking, or ruminating, and as it builds with the narration and the mix of stark and experimental cinematography from the great Christopher Doyle (great at, you know, these kinds of art-house films), as part of Van Sant's method of character study.

Alex's inability to connect, with friends, parents, authority figures, even his own impulse to release his inner thoughts, however brief and to the point ("I'm not much of a creative writer," Alex admits), is what is meant to absorb the viewer into Paranoid Park. For Van Sant, no matter what the excesses of the light touches of music (mostly from Nino Rota and Elliot Smith), or the slow-motion skateboarding (which I could go either way on as a casual admirer of the sport), or the bits that seem to have not much to do with anything aside from following a character in the midst of some thought (i.e. Alex on an escalator), it works as a feat of art for expressing its character, in the relatively short running time, like no other filmmaker would. It's somewhat challenging, but one that's worth taking for glimpses into a state of mind akin to the sobering existential and, more startling, the lack-of-coming-of-age to the character. 8.5/10

Paranoid Park (2007) ****

Another Van Sant gem. Discovering Bela Tarr has really redefined his career, and brought out a new artistic direction in him. I've really been enjoying his new directions, and have been a great admirer of Elephant in particular. Van Sant here has crafted a very interesting film, one that at the end had to make me think for a minute: wait? he's robbed us of the end of the story - only to snap back again seconds later to think: you crafty swine...

Yes, the security guard narrative essentially is a macguffen. Paranoid Park transcends its thematic plot to discover deeper and far more rewarding truths. The film is above all about communication, or the lack thereof, or learning how to of. The story follows Alex, a young skater who is involved in the accidental but brutal death of a security guard in a train yard nearby the infamous Paranoid Park. The narrative style jumps around in time, tracing a number of days in the life of our young skater. He has issues with his parents: they're divorcing; he feels they don't' care about him. He has issues with his girlfriend: she pushes him to have sex, and he does not because he wants to but because he can't communicate how he feels to her. And to push things over the top, he has the burden of being involved in a man's death, and a suspicious but jovial police officer questioning him. Sounds like pretty standard stuff, but its the execution that makes it work. Alex narrates the film as he writes out his story. We come to find in the last act that he's been persuaded by a kindly and politically interested girl, who recognizes when no one else does that he's harbouring some serious baggage. This she tells him is the key to his emancipation. Once he writes he had can simply burn it - its the telling of the story that counts, not the audience. Van Sant employs his newfound quiet and laboured pacing to highlight the anomic alienation of Alex from his slacker and otherwise inept friends (who laugh at the photos of the mutilated man's body), his girlfriend, and most of all his parents. He uses some excellent and totally unexpected music for a skater film, and structures this as the most refined film featuring skate boarding one could imagine. He also uses some clever camera and editing tricks, such as a number of sequences where the soundtrack plays at normal speed against a shot that is slowed down, creating a dreamy and hallucinatory effect. It was otherwise nice to see some old School Fellini film music thrown in their. Parents were a big theme in Elephant, and I think an even bigger theme here. Van Sant uses a simple but ingeniously clever camera trick to highlight the distance between Alex and his parents - he keeps their faces either offscreen of out of focus, save for one important moment. The affect created is such that when we finally see the face come into focus, the words said become all the more poignant and truly touching