Gabe Nevins plays Alex, a youth who may have done something horrible in Paranoid Park
Alex is a sleepy Portland kid who loves skateboarding. His parents are in the middle of a divorce, and he’s indifferent to his sketchy girlfriend. In Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, that’s pretty much the whole story. As the film goes on, though, and Alex is called down to the principal’s office to talk to a detective about a possible murder, a mystery begins to unfold. Maybe Alex did something terrible.
That’s where Van Sant lets his film linger — that feeling of utter dread you experienced as a kid when something awful has happened and you’re waiting to be caught, your mind twirling alternately between paranoia and numbness. And if you aren’t caught, it’s a feeling of such leaden guilt that it drags you down, just a bit, forever.
The film is based on the book by Blake Nelson, although the plot is bare enough to allow Van Sant to hang his own ideas on it. The film centres on Portland’s best place to skate, the hidden Paranoid Park. The park is both mythical and accessible to Alex and his friends, who are often too scared to skate in front of the older kids that populate the park. One evening, Alex finds himself there alone, and takes off with an older punk in search of beer. What happens that night is slowly pieced together from Alex’s memories, news reports and a kind detective looking for answers.
The jumbled narrative reflects Alex’s scattered memory, still trying to piece together a horribly tragic event. In trying to process what’s happened, his friend suggests that he write it out — not to his parents, not to the police, but an “other.” It’s like writing a book, or an essay. The approach — like Van Sant’s last few films —suggests that by eliminating the need to address a particular viewer, you get to a clearer, purer storytelling. It’s as much about the preparation of a work as its execution.
Paranoid Park is Van Sant’s second excursion into high school territory, after the stunning Elephant. Esthetically, it forms a tetralogy with Gerry, Elephant and Last Days — the long, slow takes; shots alternately clear, gritty and splintered. The films only appear elliptical, however — while there’s a more conscious effort to inject a clearer narrative into Paranoid Park, each of his later films have shown an increasing dedication to the evolution of character creation through an anthropological approach to filmmaking. By letting the camera sit and quietly observe Alex and his friends, a specific tale and humanity emerges.
It’s eye candy, buoyed by a dreamy score (mostly lifted from the music Nino Roti did for Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits) and beautiful shots of Portland, constantly wet and cool. Paranoid Park ranks, along with My Own Private Idaho and Elephant, as Van Sant’s best work and is an exciting glimpse into the constantly changing curiosities of an amazing filmmaker.
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