The Train, The Park and other Things
Added 10/25/2009
Had Paranoid Park been performed by a less capable cast of actors it may have disappointed. However, given the fine ensemble of talent, this film triumphed.
Gabe Nevins' impressive performance validated a principal tenet of acting which stresses the inestimable value of well-appointed facial expressions.
The quasi-documentary style of filming infused the movie with a quality somewhere between realistic and surreal, beginning with Detective Lu's (played impeccably by Danny Liu)snappy interrogation of Alex (Gabe Nevins).
If Paranoid Park contained any weaknesses at all, the film's vague ending might warrant that distinction.
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A Masterpiece
Added 9/18/2009
This is one of Gus Van Sant's greatest films, and it has yet to leave my mind since seeing it months ago. It tells a powerful story about feelings of guilt, and in ways you would not expect. It is eye opening and it is powerful film-making at its finest.
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Paranoid Park could arguably be Van Sant's retelling of Dostoyevsky's seminal Crime and Punishment; it is an intimate examination of a murderer, and the undertaking of guilt and societal disconnect. It follows the memories of Alex, a high school skateboarder in Portland, as they are told to us through his narration; something is irking him, and he is using the power of the narrative story as a mode of catharsis. He describes a local skate park, an illegally built array of concrete structures known as Paranoid by the skater kids, as the Eden of his adolescent dreams; his aspirations entail acceptance among his boarding cohorts, and being deemed `good enough' for Paranoid.
We then find ourselves following Alex directly inside his memories, as we start jumping back and forth through time. But we learn what is causing Alex's guilt when he has an interrogation with the local police detective, Liu, and we discover that a security guard has been murdered. A scream briefly flits into the soundtrack, indicating a troubled connection in Alex's memory, and now we realize that he is involved in the killing.
What follows is a landscape of heavy emotion as the stream of Alex`s thoughts spill into the actual filmic form; the weight of Alex's conscious takes the form of a deconstructed linear narrative of storytelling, a rich soundscape that portrays the sea of the mind's noise, and punctuations of skateboarding kids (which we later find out are the audition tapes of the actors playing Alex and his friends). The people that fill Alex's life are interestingly realized characters; his best friend Jarrod, the mentor and cause of his downfall Scratch, his strangely `other' girlfriends Macy and Jennifer, and the aforementioned detective.
This is a film about memory, and therefore, about history and historiography of the self. Van Sant approaches 'remembering' from a very unique perspective in order to tell the story, harkening back to concepts De Certeau expressed about the telling of history. As Alex himself states, "I didn't do very well in creative writing, but I'll get this all on paper eventually." The narrative is fragmented; events are not placed in logical order on a linear timeline, scenes are frequently repeated in differing ways, and sequences are reconstructed with unraveling detail as the `plot thickens;' the entire movie functions as re-enacted pieces of thought. The opening presents this skewed vision of storytelling in showing our hero, Alex, beginning to write the story (the history) of the events at hand. And he is writing in pencil, which leaves room for error and correction; `rewriting.' But even the scenes of him writing the story we are seeing are situated along with the rest of the sequences as pieces of a larger memory; one has to wonder when, in fact, the 'present' of the film is. The film harkens to ideas we all struggle with over time: our remembering, our remembered.
From a thematically critical perspective, this is a film dealing with the concepts of narratological understanding; the idea that time is not linear, that it can be fragmented and non-sequential like memory and thought. It is an example of mannerist mise-en-scene; the style is not motivated by the subject matter, but in its own justification. And though not the first time dealing with these ideas, it is Gus Van Sant's finest approach, and it demonstrates the craftsmanship embodying his work.
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Quirky, lyrical, brilliant
Added 3/30/2009
Gus Van Sant is by far the most interesting director working today. He's good enough at making mainstream Hollywood movies (like To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Psycho, and Milk) to get funding to make the movies he really cares about, like Paranoid Park, "little" movies that are infinitely more interesting than the big ones. He's made use of Hollywood, but so far he hasn't shown any sign of selling out to Hollywood. After every blockbuster, he goes home to Portland and gets back to work.
Since he follows his own muse (and her alone) in making these little movies, it wouldn't matter if every reviewer here thought they were too slow or boring or pretentious, as a large number do. He obviously makes them to please himself and not any audience, so it's almost a coincidence if anybody else likes them. Fortunately, I'm one who does.
Every "real" Van Sant movie, from Mala Noche to Paranoid Park, is a fascinating invitation to see and hear and (best of all) feel his very personal, quirky, lyrical, surreal, usually gritty and always fascinating take on a tiny little corner of this very wide world. He doesn't care enough what any of us think about his work to make it more palatable. Thank God. Like a true creator, he does what feels right to him. The beauty in that approach is that it gives us access to something completely unique, unavailable anywhere else.
People who insist on being spoon-fed their entertainment in familiar packages tend not to like Van Sant's little independent movies, but those people have many other options. Neatly packaged, predigested entertainment in familiar formats is what Hollywood cranks out by the hundreds every year. For the rest of us, there are the few odd geniuses like Gus Van Sant, willing to share their vision untainted by the public's demands for entertainment. He keeps on making these quirky gems, and they are consistently challenging, brilliant and very distinctive. Nobody would ever mistake a real Van Sant movie for one from The Walt Disney Company.
Van Sant is at heart a painter, after all, not a writer, not a storyteller, not a teacher. He gives us an impression of a story, a glimpse into it, not a neatly sequential, fully wrapped-up and satisfying narrative. He never gives us all the facts or answers every question or ties up every loose end, and he rarely tells a story in chronological order. He never, ever thinks for us. He gives us a glimpse into an experience and leaves us free to get whatever we can out of it.
I'm not saying that Van Sant's movies are just free-associating, chaotic messes. Paranoid Park, for example, is beautifully if unconventionally structured. The ghastly "crime" is in almost the exact center of the movie, with the details and consequences weaving in and out around it in both directions like swirls in a whirlpool.
Like Van Sant's other independent movies (and like all truly great movies), Paranoid Park cannot be fully appreciated in one viewing, or even two or three. That may be one reason some people don't like them--you don't get up from the first viewing as satisfied as if you'd finished a good meal. If anything, you leave hungrier than when you started. Only the second or third time do you even begin to comprehend what you've seen, to appreciate how the various, disparate elements fit together into an emotionally coherent and powerful whole.
I'll give an example. One very unusual thing Van Sant does in Paranoid Park is use background music originally composed for somebody else's movie, in this case several of Nino Rota's 40-year-old themes from Fellini's Juliet Of The Spirits. That music often accompanies one of the long slow-motion scenes of Alex just walking that so many reviewers complain about.
When I was watching Paranoid Park the first time, I noticed that that music sounded familiar, and I liked it, but I didn't recognize what it was until I saw the end credits. So I thought a while about why Van Sant would do such a strange thing, and I started remembering Juliet, and seeing similarities between Juliet's story and Alex's, and how perfectly her music fitted his experiences, and so the second time it was like watching a whole new movie.
That's how great movies are supposed to be. If you get all there is to get the first time, it means there wasn't much worth getting.
I'm tempted to say that Paranoid Park is the best Van Sant movie yet, but that's just because it's the one that's freshest in my mind. I remember Mala Noche, or the River Phoenix scenes in My Own Private Idaho, or the long dolly shot in Last Days, and I have to rein myself in. So I'll just say that Paranoid Park is the latest little masterpiece in a string of little masterpieces that hopefully will keep growing between the blockbusters for a long, long time.
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The Good, The Repetitiveness, and The pretentiousness.
Added 2/1/2009
The good: A character study of a stereotypical looking skateboard teenager who is anything but stereotypical. Rather Van Sant, conveys to us the boy is a critical thinker who understands people could possibly have careers for other reasons then for money (whereas his judges may not be so critical) in disagreement of his more immature friends, a lesson sometimes learned by some adults after financial enslavement and a need to make big money. With little words Van Sant also manages to show the teen has a conscious but also has him make the politically incorrect correct choice which saves him from doing an internship in a prison learning how to be a criminal.
The repetitiveness of Park's structure comes off as pretentious at times. For example, you get some plot followed by slow motion scenes over and over which felt like the film was trying to be arty for arts sake. However, this one slight negative could stand to be a positive if this structure and style manages to seep into the subconscious and is remembered whereas so many instantly awesome popcorn flicks are forgotten.
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