Gus Van Sant: Paranoid Park

[mouton]

PARANOID PARK
Written and Directed by Gus Van Sant
Starring: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Liu, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller, Lauren McKinney

Alex: Nobody is ever ready for Paranoid Park.

Up the ramp, through the sky and inevitably down again, pulled back by the greater forces that were just defied momentarily. This is the repeated journey of the seasoned skater. In PARANOID PARK, the community made skate park that plays home to Gus Van Sant’s latest effort and a number of aimless boarders, the journey is dreamy. Boys go up, boys come down and, though they never seem to know where they will land, the camera is always right behind them to capture their fall back to earth. Between Christopher Doyle’s streaming cinematography and the mangled music of Nino Rota, it is easy to feel as if you might be dreaming when watching, if only your eyes were closed. It isn’t long though before the hollow looks on everyone’s faces, the pointless words that repeatedly fall out of everyone’s mouths and the dryer than dust narration, reminiscent of being subjected to a classmate’s account of his summer vacation in the front of the class, wake you from your dream to see things as they really are. PARANOID PARK is just another Van Sant art experiment gone painfully wrong. If only the aging director weren’t so blinded by his adoration for the young – maybe then he could see that he wasn’t showing us his dreams but rather his fantasies.

From the moment the film opens on a static shot of cars passing over a bridge in time lapse photography, you know that you’re about to see that other kind of Van Sant movie. The veteran director has always skated back and forth between the accessible and the abnormal. He has proven that he can handle both sides of the ramp with ease (GOOD WILL HUNTING vs. MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO) and has wiped out just as often (FINDING FORRESTER vs. EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES). Lately though, he seems more concerned with trying hard to be different that the works feel increasingly labored and less genuine or spontaneous. While he’s busy spitting on convention, he doesn’t realize that he’s creating his own distinct but overdone aesthetic at the same time. I for one have seen enough lanky, longhaired, young boys looking blankly into the camera before turning and walking away as we follow and stare at their pants hanging off their asses. Chance the scenery from a skate park to a desert or a high school corridor and all his later films become interchangeable. Only PARANOID PARK is distinctly different then his other works – it’s almost entirely unenjoyable and not the least bit aware or concerned for its audience.

As if snubbing both your audience and convention weren’t enough, Van Sant also doesn’t seem to care about his own amassed experience. What point is there in making movies for over twenty years if you’re not going to use what you’ve learnt to make even better ones? Though Van Sant may clearly be bored of the Hollywood style, that doesn’t mean it holds no merit. To ensure PARANOID PARK felt fresh and inspired, he cast non-professional actors he found on myspace. First of all, I’m pretty sure other men his age have been reprimanded, not rewarded for seeking out underage boys on the internet. Secondly, untrained acting does not come across as more authentic, it just comes across as bad. A movie about teenagers trying to come to terms with their inevitable passage into adulthood shouldn’t feel like it was made by a bunch of teenagers on the weekend because they had nothing better to do with their time. And even Van Sant knows his story was thinner than the emaciated boys onscreen as he is constantly cutting back to montages of said boys performing skate tricks with their buddies. Either he was trying to distract us from the film’s futility or the boys were just plain distracting him.

Honestly, I’m not sure who exactly is supposed to enjoy PARANOID PARK. It is far too esoteric for the distracted generation it portrays and entirely uninteresting to the older art house crowd given the subject matter. I like art house and skater boys and I still wanted to scream in the middle of the picture to see if I was either living or dreaming this particular nightmare. And so it would seem that Van Sant has successfully made a picture for an untapped audience – men in their fifties desperate enough to sit through a painfully mundane hour and a half of uselessness to enjoy a few shots of boys in their prime flying through the air with their wooden boards gripped tightly in their virile hands.

www.blacksheepreviews.com

[oscar jubis]

This is the best reviewed English-language film to open in the past three months. It was also #3 on the Best Unrealeased Films of 2007 poll conducted by Film Comment magazine. So this review comes as a bit of a surprise. I bet some of those crits are NOT 50-something guys out to enjoy shots of boys in their prime... Would statements like that one in your review be construed as homophobic if written by straight critics? I wonder.

You mention many Gus Van Sant films but none of the most pertinent ones: Elephant, Last Days and Gerry, which apparently share stylistic aspects with Paranoid Park.

I would watch anything lensed by Chris Doyle so I can't wait to check this out.

[mouton]

Well, Oscar, you know film criticism ... it's entirely subjective. I found this film to be tedious, tired and tacky. The fact that it is apparently one of the best reviewed American films released so far this year says more about everything else, I think. Besides, it only has a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes. It isn't exactly screaming classic.

I don't think the comments I've made would be considered homophobic if written by a straight writer. I'm only addressing the reality of the scenario. I would be saying the same thing if Van Sant were straight and this were a movie about a female skater.

Of course you're right about some of the critics not being 50-year old men who enjoy boys in their prime. I was trying to be funny, not realistic.

The fact is, this movie was incredibly dull and awkward and Christopher Doyle couldn't save it. You have fun though as I'm sure you probably will ... which is not to say I'm insinuating that you like young boys in case you were wondering.

[Chris Knipp]

GUS VAN SANT: PARANOID PARK (2008)

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/674/iSYCN6.jpg

What's most important?

Review by Chris Knipp

The film publicity lays it out about Paranoid Park with a synopsis that goes like this: "Alex, a teenage skateboarder, accidentally kills a security guard in the vicinity of Paranoid Park, Portland’s tough skate park. He decides to say nothing." This does little justice to Van Sant's complicated, understated, beautiful film.

But in action terms indeed that's all that happens. You could almost call this a police non-procedural. The story isn't told in the simple order suggested by the synopsis. The audience only gradually learns what Alex (Gabe Nevins) got involved in, and as the synopsis says, he never tells anybody (though viewers get to see it). He alludes vaguely to something bad that’s happened when talking to Macy (Lauren McKinney), a smart, ironic girl who seems to move in on Alex as Jennifer (Taylor Momsen), who wants to be his girlfriend, moves out (he breaks up with Jennifer after they’ve had sex). Macy suggests that to get it off his chest Alex can write a letter or diary about whatever happened—then, if he likes, just burn it. Through following Alex’s various writing sessions, Van Sant weaves in the story of that event he can’t talk about, doesn’t know what to do about, and can’t stop thinking about.

His best friend Jared (Jake Miller) thinks Alex is crazy to give up “free sex” by breaking up with Jennifer; but he does. Maybe what has happened to Alex puts having sex into perspective for him But even before that going to Paranoid Park with Jared was more interesting to Alex at this stage than Jennifer. Paranoid Park is an awesome place to skateboard. It’s also scary: scary because it’s a bad part of town, and there are tough older guys who hang out there; and also challenging for Alex because he doesn’t think he’s good enough to skate in public. But it calls to him even when Jared can’t go there with him. He goes alone one night, and that’s when he talks to some of the older guys and afterwards the bad stuff happens.

The story about the death of the security guard by the railroad tracks comes up on the TV news. It looked accidental, but then a possibility of homicide appeared. Because the train tracks where the death occurred are near Paranoid Park, Detective Richard Lu (Dan Liu) shows up at Alex’s high school and all the skateboarders are summoned to talk to him. He interviews Alex separately later (but that’s seen before). Detective Lu is very good at talking to the boys. He’s completely non-threatening, but he does his job. However, it seems likely that as one kid says, he’s just being a cop, but doesn’t really know anything. Anyway, this story isn’t about the crime investigation; it’s just about Alex.

Alex’s and his little brother’s father has moved out and their parents are getting divorced, not an easy thing to deal with. What’s most important in Alex’s life right now? His involvement in accidental homicide? His parents’ divorce? A girl who want to have sex with him before he’s ready? Paranoid Park—a test of skateboarding manhood? The movie shows all these things competing for attention in Alex’s world.

Teenage boys tend to be somewhat opaque. The movie is true to that. Certainly Alex never shows others any sign of anxiety. He’s cool as a cucumber, but without being hard. (His face is gentle, almost pretty.) He’s simply a teenage boy. Van Sant, working swiftly and intuitively from Blake Nelson’s novel of the same name, set in Portland like the film, gets that right. Some of the dialogue is hilariously authentic teenage talk. After Jennifer and Alex have had sex, she's immediately offscreen on her cell phone to her best girlfriend saying, “We did it, we totally did it. It was awesome!” You could laugh so hard you’d cry. But the movie creeps up on you, it’s so understated. There is a lot of use of music. When Alex drives his mother’s car to the skate park alone that evening (he looks like a child behind the wheel) different music plays from rap to Beethoven’s Ninth, and Alex’s expressions change with each change of sound as if to express a boy’s sudden shifts of mood. The editing is swift and poetic, lyrical and beautiful.

Paranoid Park has a gruesome moment, but as should be clear by now, it’s generally notable for its subtlety and restraint (as was even Elephant, considering).

Van Sant follows the format of his last three films, Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days, and draws his actors mostly from Portland high schools as he did for Elephant. This time the cinematography is by Christopher Doyle. Doyle is associated with the spectacular blurry kinetic effects of Wong Kar Wai films, but he’s worked with static shots, and with other directors. His skill pays off in beautiful visuals throughout, the gift for flowing movement shown in the recurrent skateboarding sequences--which don’t go so much for showy runs as for cool, idiosyncratic moments. This quartet of new films from Van Sant, each quite distinctive from the other but possessed of a unifying stylistic harmony, restore his previously wavering reputation and mark him out unquestionably as one of American's more prominent cinematic auteurs of these times. And Paranoid Park is the most accessible of the four.

It's also the more interior as a psychological study (cryptic though it may be)—and the least attention-getting of these films. Gerry (which few have seen) is notable for its amazing real-time effects as it explores the horror of getting lost in the desert. Elephant leads up to a Columbine-style school massacre and is the opposite of Paranoid Park, because it’s very much a multi-viewpoint event film. Last Days is a dreamy mood piece about a doomed rock star fading into isolation and madness, à la Kurt Cobain. Paranoid Park has a terrible event at its center like those two preceding films, but approaches the event crab-wise. It’s all in the style. This story could have become a TV movie-of-the-week, perhaps, with a breathless moralistic finale. Van Sant’s distinctive touch is both in the elegantly offhand tale-telling and in the quiet finish. In a sense it’s a movie about forgiveness.

[This review appeared in slightly different form in the Festival Coverage section of this site. It was a selection of the NYFF.]

[Chris Knipp]

[mouton writes:]

Besides, it only has a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes. It isn't exactly screaming classic. Maybe not; time will tell. But I'd suggest Metacritic is a more reliable source on critical opinion about movies, in part because of the larger and better body of critics consulted by that site (that despite my being listed on Rotten Tomatoes and not on Metacritic). And the Metacritic rating for Paranoid Park score is 84. I'm having a little trouble understanding why your reaction to the film is so negative, mouton. I would agree with Oscar, the relavant Van Sant comparisons are with Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days It's very much of a piece with them stylistically; I make some comparisons in the last paragraph of my review. Mainly, Paranoid Park is "the more interior as a psychological study (cryptic though it may be)—and the least attention-getting of these films." I've seen it twice. The other time was in Paris, where it opened in late October subtitled, in MK2 theaters. I have not read many reviews. I think David Edelstein's (http://nymag.com/movies/reviews/44751/) in New York Magazine is perceptive. The titles is "You could call Paranoid Park another one of Gus Van Sant’s experiments. Except it works."

Only for me, all his string of recent "experiments" from Gerry to Paranoid Park work. Certainly any one of them may work better when you've seen the others.

Oscar may be torn on this one, since his two idols are split: Hoberman (Metacritic 100) rating it extremely high, Rosenbaum, very low (Metacritic 50). I hope you won't just compromise and take a 75 position, Oscar. I think thiis is a very stylish and subtle film.

I hadn't looked before (though I know Van Sant is liked in France) but this did very well in Paris especially with some of the hipper critics--those of Le Monde, Cahiers du Cinema, L'Humanite, Les Inrockuptibles, Premiere.

[Chris Knipp]

La Graine et le mulet/The Secret of the Graion is the top rated film critically in France right now by the way. Did you see it at the Miami Festival, Oscar, as we discussed? and is your review of Reygadas' Silent Light coming shortly? I'd like to discuss it with you.

[oscar jubis]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp [/i]
Oscar may be torn on this one, since his two idols are split: Hoberman (Metacritic 100) rating it extremely high, Rosenbaum, very low (Metacritic 50). I hope you won't just compromise and take a 75 position, Oscar.

As you know, what you always get is my honest, personal opinion, not something influenced by Hoberman or Rosenbaum or the metacritic score. Unlike Rosenbaum, for instance, I have a lot of problems with Mala Noche (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=18866#post18866) but like most critics, I love My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy and Elephant and like To Die For a lot. I thought Gerry went on for too long for what it is and I didn't like Last Days (http://www.filmwurld.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=14246#post14246).
I could possibly dislike the new film as much as mouton but I won't be "trying to be funny" by writing stuff like:
"Van Sant has successfully made a picture for an untapped audience – men in their fifties desperate enough to sit through a painfully mundane hour and a half of uselessness to enjoy a few shots of boys in their prime flying through the air with their wooden boards gripped tightly in their virile hands."

La Graine et le mulet/The Secret of the Graion is the top rated film critically in France right now by the way. Did you see it at the Miami Festival, Oscar, as we discussed? and is your review of Reygadas' Silent Light coming shortly? I'd like to discuss it with you.
I watched Kechiche's film and liked it a lot. Will review Silent Light soon so we can enjoy having an exchange about it. What's kept me from writing it is my indecision regarding whether to divulge the two main plot twists, which occur towards the end of the picture. I probably will issue a Spoiler Alert and mention them.

[Chris Knipp]

Good, look forward to your comments, to hearing more about La grain et le mulet/The Secret of the Grain (which I haven't read anything about yet) and perhaps exchanging observations about Reygadas' fascinating Silent Light.

Sometimes attempts to be cute misfire, but I won't hold mouton's comments against him even though I don't quite understand how he arrived at them.

Paranoid Park is subtle and low key, but it's funny how some find it thin, meandering, dull, or "mundane" (whatever that means exactly) when it contains accidental homicide, loss of virginity, parents' divorce, and other heavy challenges to a teenager's courage and sanity. Edelstein, whose review I mentioned, suggests that while Alex, the protagonist, appears a blank at first, that turns out to mask a personal inner world that's "not too empty but too full." Surely the secret of understanding the film is not to eroticize the protagonist but to enter into his sensibility. Fail to do that, and you've got nothing but some skateboarding shots and some music.

The pedophile accusation (not against the audience but the director) has been advanced by a critic who I think is gay (and is certifiably black), Armond White. who in reviewing the simultaneous showing last year of Mala Noche (in a new print) and Bruce Weber's Let's Get Lost, wrote (http://www.nypress.com/20/23/film/ArmondWhite2.cfm) in a review entitled "Their Own Private Infatuations":
It is clear now, after Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, Elephant and Last Days that Van Sant is our leading chicken-hawk filmmaker (rivaled only by Larry Clark). But though I value White as a contrarian original, he is sometimes over the top and beyond the bounds of fair play, as I think mouton may be ever--so slightly--in his review of Paranoid Park too.

[oscar jubis]

Rather than use the common review framework I opted for a conversational approach to express some of my thoughts.

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
This does little justice to Van Sant's complicated, understated, beautiful film.
But in action terms indeed that's all that happens. You could almost call this a police non-procedural. The story isn't told in the simple order suggested by the synopsis. The audience only gradually learns what Alex (Gabe Nevins) got involved in, and as the synopsis says, he never tells anybody (though viewers get to see it).
Ah yes, the use of the scrambled chronology, which often raises the intrigue factor and focuses my attention. I think it's important to ask ourselves what purpose it serves at different junctures. I am somewhat divided as to its effectiveness here. On the one hand, I liked finding out rather late in the film that Alex has been writing about his Paranoid Park experiences because Macy suggested it. On the other hand, showing Det. Lu's questioning Alex before the scene in which Lu first comes to the school to talk to the skaters renders the latter almost perfunctory. We already know it's going to lead to Alex being questioned individually. We do get to see a photo of the victim but that becomes less important because we'll get to watch the actual event later.

Paranoid Park is an awesome place to skateboard. It’s also scary: scary because it’s a bad part of town, and there are tough older guys who hang out there; and also challenging for Alex because he doesn’t think he’s good enough to skate in public.
It's reasonable to characterize Alex going there, especially going alone, as a rite of passage within Alex's coming-of-age.

Teenage boys tend to be somewhat opaque. The movie is true to that. Certainly Alex never shows others any sign of anxiety. He’s cool as a cucumber, but without being hard.
This is why the shower scene is one of the most important. It offers a glimpse at the private, pained Alex he doesn't show in public. It is also, perhaps, the film's signature scene. Three elements contribute strongly: slow-montion, variable lighting affecting color, and a very expressive sound design that includes sounds not caused by the environment in which the scene takes place; psychogenic sounds Alex remembers but cannot possibly be hearing.

There is a lot of use of music. When Alex drives his mother’s car to the skate park alone that evening different music plays from rap to Beethoven’s Ninth, and Alex’s expressions change with each change of sound as if to express a boy’s sudden shifts of mood.
Sometimes the use of music seems to have a distancing effect that it's hard to link to Alex or any other character. The film uses Nino Rota scores a lot, especially the one for Fellini's Juliet of the Spirits. Beautiful it is.

The editing is swift and poetic, lyrical and beautiful.Paranoid Park has a gruesome moment, but as should be clear by now, it’s generally notable for its subtlety and restraint.
We first hear about the gruesome event, about the condition of the victim's body. Then we see a close-up of the crime-scene photo from the point of view of Alex. We get to watch the actual accident. Then two scenes of the body, again, from Alex's viewpoint. One can say there are three or four gruesome moments and I find them excessive given the "subtlety and restraint" that characterizes the film.

This time the cinematography is by Christopher Doyle. Doyle is associated with the spectacular blurry kinetic effects of Wong Kar Wai films, but he’s worked with static shots, and with other directors. His skill pays off in beautiful visuals throughout, the gift for flowing movement shown in the recurrent skateboarding sequences--which don’t go so much for showy runs as for cool, idiosyncratic moments.
The super-8 mm scenes of kids skateboarding were actually shot by Doyle protege Rain Kathy Li. She lensed Doyle's segment from Paris, je t'aime and Doyle's upcoming Polish feature Izolator aka Warsaw Dark.

It's also the more interior as a psychological study (cryptic though it may be)—and the least attention-getting of these films.
Yes, it is more interior than the others. As Hoberman wrote, there's more inner life in it than in Elephant, which is more sociological. I'm not really sure what you mean by "attention-getting" so I won't comment.

In a sense it’s a movie about forgiveness.
I wonder if there are those who watch it who wouldn't want Alex to forgive himself and not have to face further questioning or worse.