Paranoid Park
Monday, 24 Dec 2007 17:29
Gabe Nevins as Paranoid Park's Alex
Directed by Gus van Sant, starring Gabe Nevins, Taylor Momsen and Daniel Liu, running time 90mins, out December 26th.
In a nutshell:
Disaffected teen makes skate mistake
What's it all about?
Paranoid Park is another of director Gus van Sant's studied looks at that most clichéd of beasts - the troubled teenager. After the success of Elephant, which drew on the Columbine massacre as source material, and the less well-received Last Days, which focused on the archetypal teenage role model Kurt Cobain, Van Sant now turns to a novel by Blake Nelson - Paranoid Park.
As in the book, Paranoid Park the film focuses on the life of Alex a young skateboarder who takes a trip to an illegal skate park and gets involved in a tragic accident. Told in non-chronological order, the story immerses itself in Alex's attempts to deal with the situation, with absent parents, a girlfriend he's not interested in and an overly-chummy cop all having to be factored in to the mix.
Who's in it?
Of late, Van Sant has been less concerned with 'acting' in itself than he has with the way the camera focuses on his main characters. Not for him then the big up-and-coming actors of the day - instead he turned to MySpace to find the stars of Paranoid Park (little could Van Sant have realised that the social-networking site would be been thoroughly usurped by Facebook in the zeitgeist stakes come 2007).
So we have Gabe Nevins as Alex, Jake Miller as best bud Jared, Lauren McKinney as old friend Macy. The real star quality is saved for the role of Alex's girlfriend Jennifer - step forward Taylor Momsen, who previously had a brief role in Spy Kids 2.
As an example:
"No one's ever really ready for Paranoid Park" - an unnamed pupil highlights the almost mythical nature of the place to a cop who's attempting to hide his suspicion.
Likelihood of a trip to the Oscars
The acting is so reserved as to be almost non-existent, but cinematography from Christopher Doyle is, as ever, a thing of joy, and the ingenious sound editing, which combines all kinds of effects with a soundtrack that veers from rap to classical to country, will be hard to beat.
What the others say
"The movie doesn't narrate what happened as much as immerse itself in Alex's numb state of alienation and denial, which I didn't find quite as rewarding as I guess I was supposed to" - Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian.
"[Van Sant] has a feel for youth counter culture that other directors just miss completely" - Matt Mazur, PopMatters
So is it any good?/b>
Given its subject matter, Paranoid Park is a remarkably calm affair - on the surface at least. Alex's continually blank face gives away almost nothing about what he's feeling, so it's left to the camera to probe the tensions, and to the sound to give some kind of approximation of inner feeling.
This kind of approach could have led to something either completely chaotic or thoroughly immersive - and it's to the credit of Van Sant and Doyle that they manage to achieve the latter.
The real chaos is clearly that which goes on inside Alex's head, and here too Paranoid Park does a good job, with its flashbacks and ever-intensifying focus, of portraying Alex's efforts to make sense of what he's done and how he should deal with it.
It's not all distant moral inquiry though - one scene with a kid brother who's clearly seen Napoleon Dynamite far too many times is all the more funny because it's so unexpected, while Alex and Jennifer's relationship is a frequently hilarious portrait of how utterly different two people can be. But Van Sant doesn't try to judge these characters, or even the acts they perform, instead leaving it up to them to come to terms with the age-old celluloid question of 'growing up' in a way that seems fresh and different.
8/10
Dan Jones
Agree with this review? Have a different opinion? Let us know your thoughts (without being too abusive to our poor reviewers please) and we'll post the best ones on the site.
Write your comments below: