Paranoid Park
Reviewed By Rich Drees
In many ways, Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park is a continuation
of the themes and issues he has previously examined in 2003’s
Elephant. Again we have teen characters with divorced or
separated parents. Again we have characters whom move through their
life of school, friends and family in a withdrawn state, seemingly
uninterested in engaging in the world around them. Again we find Van
Sant questioning what effect a fractured family can have on
children. And again we have yet another fascinating film, with Van
Sant managing to insulate himself into the world of today’s youth,
taking us along as voyeurs of their raw, at times amoral and
nihilistic world.
Alex (Gabe
Nevins) is a teenager, aimlessly drifting his way through life and
school, going through the motions, but not very concerned about what
is going on around him. He seems unaware of the sexual signals being
sent to him by his nominal girlfriend (Taylor Momsen). He even
appears to be uninterested in the telling of his own story, turning
his back on the camera repeatedly through the film. The only place
where he truly seems to take an interest is at an underground
skateboard park. While hopping a freight train one evening near the
park with some other skateboarders, Alex becomes involved with the
accidental death of a railroad yard security guard. As the police
begin to investigate the incident, Alex struggles with his own
feelings over the matter.
While using
MySpace as a casting agency would seem like a ridiculous publicity
stunt for most other films, here it has allowed Van Sant to once
again find young, raw talent as yet untainted by the training the
results in the usual performances seen in a mainstream film. Here,
the actors have not overanalyzed their characters with an acting
coach, searching for the perfect, and thus artificial, reading of
each line of dialogue. When the occasional bit of delivered dialogue
falls flat, it only emphasizes the flat and desensitized world of
these teens.
In addition to
these talented newcomers’ performances, Van Sant employs subtle
tricks to visually accentuate the characters’ disconnect from the
world around them. He has Cinematographer Christopher Doyle,
unusually away from the side of collaborator Wong Kar-Wai, to stay
away from deep focus shots, leaving backgrounds blurry and
indistinct. Doyle’s work is augmented by Rain Kathy Li’s Super 8
photography whose soft, floating, dream-like quality captures the
peace Alex finds at the skate park, the only peace he feels in his
life.
More tone poem
than crime story, the film’s structure - nonlinear, cutting back and
forth across the storyline - mirrors Alex’s attempt to set what
happened down on paper. Alex is another in a series of characters of
Van Sant’s who are victims of divorced, absent or just plain
inattentive parents. Although he is trying to come to terms with
what has happened, he has no moral foundation for mentally and
emotionally processing the events. It is no wonder that Alex has no
ability to understand that he shares culpability for the watchman’s
death. He doesn’t care because he doesn’t appear to have the ability
to care. He doesn’t feel responsible because he has never had to
have any responsibilities outside of taking care of himself. One
would almost expect that such aimless, amoral and apathetic
characters would come off as unlikable, but Van Sant manages to keep
our sympathies for a majority of the cast - even the generation
gap-clueless cops come off as decent enough - without ever letting
the proceedings to become maudlin. |
