Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Liu, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller, Lauren McKinney, Winfield Jackson, Joe Schweitzer, Grace Carter, Jay ‘Smay’ Williamson, Dillon Hines.
Execution time: 90 minutes
One of the characters says to Alex (Gabe Nevins): “No one is really ready for Paranoid Park.”
Have you been in the ‘wrong place, at the wrong time’ and ended up doing something drastic and guilt destroyed you from within? That’s exactly what main protagonist Alex goes through in this Gus Van Sant movie.
Based on the Blake Nelson novel of the same name, it follows 16-year-old skater Alex, who accidentally kills a security guard outside Paranoid Park, Portland’s most infamous skating spot. When you decide not to tell anyone, you take on an overwhelming load of guilt.
Many people have been comparing this film to Elephant, the film by Gus Van Sant, which won the Palme d’Or in 2003. Paranoid Park is more about the characters than the story itself. Mostly teenagers recruited from MySpace, most of them with performances that hint at their own lives in reality. Unlike other teen movies, the kids here don’t seem angry, overly rebellious, or addicted to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. They are not stupid either. They are convincingly normal teenagers, very real. They could even be your children.
Most of the events in Paranoid Park are recounted through Alex’s mental narration. Long demonstrations of skateboarding skills may seem boring, but it’s the editing, the background music, and the inventive use of cameras and formats that are quite appealing. We see and feel how this hobby, through the eyes of the skaters, produces exposure to drugs or music. By making Alex’s perspective so real to us, the director makes us think like Alex. We are closer to him than the adults in his world. When Alex talks to his mother or father, they stay out of focus or out of frame for quite some time in the conversation, that’s because the adults have been marginalized and shouldn’t be interesting. Another example is Macy tells Alex to write the entire incident as a book or journal and send it to someone other than his parents and she tells him to send it to her. Even after the mystery and incident are revealed, the movie continues to show what Alex is going through and how he copes with it.
Photography is by Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love). Sun shining through blades of grass near shore and Super 8, 35mm and handheld inter-camera shots have a very wet feel. All the slow motion, dreamy effects, and blurry, recurring skate sequences are visually beautiful and have fluid movement. The background score is good and very diverse, from slow melancholy to hard rock.
This movie is different, unique but similar in structure to his latest movies. Paranoid Park is sure to find its audience with those who don’t require a well-crafted narrative to enjoy a movie.