Review of Paranoid Park (2007) by Parker M — 16 Mar 2010

3.5 Stars out of 4.

Paranoid Park could have easily been the title for a B-Grade Horror slasher. Or at least a mediocre Al Pacino thriller (but he stuck with 88 Minutes). Instead Paranoid Park is a drama by Gus Van Sant, the director who loves scrutinizing the psyche of youth. The film is short, subtle, and glum. But the realism shatters as the film breathes languid emotion, remorse, and fear. As hard as it comes by, this director actually gets teenagers. Their insecurities, sense of status, and odd quirks. Paranoid Park unwinds on a careen arc, through a faint haze of emotions and scattered attrition. The boy, Alex's (Gabe Nevins), life moves back and forth where spills come without anticipation. Like the motions of a skateboard. Did I mention he's a skateboarder?

Alex and his friend Jared (Jake Miller) decide to take a trip to the foreboding Paranoid Park. The park is like some kind of cult, a monster that can never be tamed. As Jared says: no one is ever ready for Paranoid Park. I don't even want to speculate if this macabre park is some sort of symbol for Alex's downward spin into regret and depression. It's all how Van Sant captures the movement of the film, as we watch the film regress in the nature of its characters but watch its style flux.

Van Sant hinders the perspective of the adult eye. Alex's mother is hidden from long shots, his father is obscured through out of focus POV shots of Alex, and teacher's pass the screen like street pedestrians. It's a way to zone in on the teens. Well, more like one teen here -- Alex. He's in a transfixing bout of brooding. His parents are divorcing, he has trouble focusing in class, and his anxious virgin girlfriend awaits Alex to deflower her. Alex avoids these thoughts by moving in a sleepwalking phase, as if that will inadvertently shut out his troubles.

When an accidental death, possible murder occurs near Paranoid Park, Alex and various other skateboarders are summoned by Detective Richard Lu (Daniel Liu) to ask the kids some questions regarding the incident. This is the best scene in the movie. The detective comes with welcoming gestures, asking the boarders simple questions. But we notice the darker nuance here. These kids could very well be potential suspects but the detective denies it. "We want background on the skateboard community." From this he makes Paranoid Park sound like a mosque. Oh the ignorance of adults.

Beforehand, Alex is individually interviewed by the detective. That is moment when the questioning should solely resemble calm, but we can't help feel that fraught feeling of tension. Alex is really hiding something. The answer lingers inside his head.

Van Sant knows exactly what to capture. He slows down the camera into a slow-motion sedentary. We watch Alex twitch his eyes, wander down the hallway, nestled by a few of his fellow skateboarders. They strut all next to each other in a march -- as if The Wild Bunch are now stuck in high school.

He'll even resist the urge to inundate the film with music. At a time, Nina Rota's number from Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits" to grab hold of the inert emotions that float indirectly on screen. Or the sombre acoustic at the end, that sounds like a Johnny Cash elegy, as we watch skateboarders find their paradise once again at the skatepark.

Okay, it's not as good as Van Sant's earlier work Elephant. That sense of silence, slowed-down momentum, and eerie energy was a brilliant way to outwardly define a typical school day gone horribly wrong. Furthermore, Van Sant's connective tracking shots enhances the aspect of character association. And how that elongated tracking path eventually fell into destruction. Paranoid Park isn't as so unconventional as Elephant, but it is as hypnotic. There's this sense of dejectedness watching a character move across life, with his thoughts buried in his head. It took a dragging opening to propel Paranoid Park into that entrancing final half when Alex's inner demons exacerbate his paranoia. It's not until Alex writes it all down on paper and his brother, with a convoluted snark, retells a scene from a classic film.

It's the anguish that Van Sant gets. The film is stripped of any form of objectivity other than Alex's. His thoughts tremble inside his head, the camera swoops across locales, capturing the essence of confusion. After finishing Paranoid Park, Van Sant leaves us with neither peace nor unsettlement. It's the urgency he calls upon. The key is that when the skateboarders ollie, jump, and perhaps fall -- they will always get back up.

I SAY--See It.