Paranoid Park

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.

**** 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.

There are 2 well known aggregate movie review sites, MetaCritic and Rotten Tomatoes that would give this film an average of 4 stars out of 5. (The NY Times review in particular is dead on, imho.) The 1 star "total bomb" reviews here are completely out of sync with accepted opinion of Paranoid Park.

Obviously, it's not for everyone. It is more for those that could appreciate Elephant or 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days than someone looking for an action skater flick. But it will go down as one of Gus Van Sant's best films in what is already a distinguished career. It's one of the most beautiful movies of recent years and the score and sound mixing is stupendous. But it takes some time and attitude adjustment to get into the flow with the film. It's well worth the time and almost demands multiple viewings.

As with Elephant, many of the young actors are novices at best. This is not a drawback at all. It only enhances the movie because the characters are so real.

Did I say it's one of the most beautiful films of recent years? Slow motion skaters, the train scene scored to a key passage from Beethoven's 9th, the shower scene, the beach, beautiful boys, beautiful girls, not so beautiful girls, losing ones virginity- all in beautiful slow motion scenes told out of sequence, often with no dialog and sometimes repeated to underscore certain points. Two signature Elliott Smith songs, played almost in their entirety, accompany two long and unedited shots of the title character to create two more memorable moments.

One of the best of 2007 and deservedly so...

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 33 reviews  3.3 out of 5 stars