Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2008)

[Michael]

There is no much to add to the glowing reviews here, especially the ones by Antoine and David E. I completely agree with them.

Just finished watching Paranoid Park. I was utterly riveted, moved and entranced. Doyle's breathtaking shots of boys skateboarding left me in a daze, wondering how they were done. Heavenly slo-mos of boys. I find it interesting that the way Van Sant shot the girls, they come off unflattering, annoying, and boring (at least to me), they are intruders to the world of Alex. In his world, only the boys remain beautiful and inviting - softly, warmly, fuzzily filmed. That adds more to the possibily of Alex being gay (before he knows it himself). Alex is a loner, an outcast, not only at home, but also outside in the skateboarding community. He goes to Paranoid Park for what? To skateboard? To make friends? Or to unconsciously/subconsciously cruise guys? During those parts at Paranoid Park, there are a few strange shots - fuzzy/blurry - of a guy sitting opposite Alex, very certainly Alex's POV.

To the almost conventional mystery-story - a young American teen's Crime and Punishment - that gets resolved in the end, yet Van Sant adds another gorgeous, haunting aura of mystery (the kind that can't be explained or resolved), that aura reminds me the feeling I get from reading my favorite book of all time, The Virgin Suicides.

The use of Fellini/Rota music made me giddy, I loved it. Fellini films are poems to lost souls and misfits of all ages so perfect match for Alex.

In the end, he finds a friend in a girl named Macy (no sexual or romantic strings/thoughts/expectations..completely non threatening to Alex) like most young gay boys with their first real buddies being girls.

Paranoid Park blows me away more than Van Sant's previous films, Elephant, Last Day, etc and it is his best film since Mala Noche.

[hot_locket]

In the end, he finds a friend in a girl named Macy (no sexual or romantic strings/thoughts/expectations..completely non threatening to Alex) like most young gay boys with their first real buddies being girls.

At the risk of bringing down the quality of discussion a few levels, she's also completely unattractive.

[chaddoli]

Attractiveness aside (c'mon, she's sorta cute), I did get the impression that Macy has some feelings for Alex, even if they aren't shared.

[Andre Jurieu]

Attractiveness aside (c'mon, she's sorta cute), I did get the impression that Macy has some feelings for Alex, even if they aren't shared.

That was the general impression I had as well. Her ability to convey her general dissatisfaction with Alex's choice for a girlfriend seemed to just be a weak cover for her attraction to Alex.

I didn't even bother with determining whether or not I found her attractive, because I couldn't get over how awful she was as an actress. I was fully prepared to grade on a curve since the majority of the cast was totally untrained and had no prior acting experience, but this was the one performance within the film that really broke the realism and annoyed the hell out of me.

[Nothing]

I think it's pretty misplaced to dismis Paranoid Park as eye-candy.

[sevenarts]

Finally got around to this, and it's an amazing film, quite possibly Van Sant's best so far. At the very least, it's a summation of his career thus far. My full review.

[Tom Hagen]

Great review, sevenarts. (By the way, I have been meaning to thank you for sometime for your excellent Berlin Alexanderplatz review; a great resource as I have been working through the series myself.)

I caught up with this last month and it truly was revelatory. The last three Van Sant films didn't work for me for a variety of reasons, but Paranoid Park was absolutely elegant filmmaking.

[filmnoir1]

I was finally able to see this last week. Gus van Sant continues to show why he is one of the best American directors working today. His understanding of the camera and its ability to elicit emotion and interest are astounding. Moroever the ways in which he uses long takes and long shots aligns him with other great directors such as Wyler, Welles, Renoir, and Ozu. A director like Van Sant speaks to the very theories of cinema as advocated by Andre Bazin in that he believed that the camera could be the purveyor of reality and that directors who understood this quality were able to in essence capture the unique and powerful qualities of the cinema.
It is clear to me that Van Sant understands that not only can a sense of space be rendered using this technique, it can also add to the level of anxiety that the characters feel and that in turn we feel as well. This is a great film and I am readily looking forward to Milk.

[tiffg]

Hey! If anyone is in or around Toronto Berlin Alexanderplatz is playing at Cinematheque Ontario! check it out along with a number of other great films -http://cinemathequeontario.ca/

[brendanjc]

I'm kind of amazed that the bulk of discussion surrounding this film here had to do with whether Van Sant was ogling the young boys in it (and the digression that followed). Maybe I'm too dense (or too straight? ), but I didn't catch a whiff of gay overtones at all. To me, the film was entirely about the isolation a teenager inevitably feels, with the accident being as similarly a contributing factor as Alex's disconnectedness from his family, his school, and his friends and subculture. There are examples of how he doesn't connect to each throughout the film - his parents are barely shown (like Antoine I wish the father had been kept out of focus in his one scene as well), his brother is too young, he falls asleep in class, he's a "skater" but he's not a confident one, and obviously he doesn't relate to his girlfriend at all. I really admire the way this film, like Elephant, much more accurately captured what high schoolers are like than pretty much anything else I can think of.

None of the particular scenes called out earlier in the thread struck me as sexualizing Alex any more than the shots of his girlfriend during/after their coitus, or the long slow-mo close-up of the two girls in the mall while Alex is reading the paper. The comment that seemed especially strange to me was the suggestion that Alex followed the older guy to the train tracks because he was attracted to him. The scene leading up to that was agonizing and the most brilliant in the film - Alex admired the other skaters at Paranoid Park, he saw a potential place to fit-in amongst the other "outcasts" there - so when a random guy and his friends sidle up and ask for Alex's board, my God. This guy might steal it, might just be teasing him or pushing him around, anything that happens to embarrass Alex would be devastating - it was certainly the biggest fear I harbored as a teen. When the offer turns out to seem genuinely friendly it leads to the only moments in the film that I can recall Alex seeming happy in the slightest, as he catches the train with this new friend, and of course that only makes what happens next more heartbreaking.

Like others mentioned, the only nits I had to pick were the uncomfortable performance from his female friend and some flat characterization (though nothing was as bad as the constant eyes-darting-to-the-camera issues or the terrible group purge session in Elephant). The photography was fantastic, as you'd expect from Doyle, and the skate video sequences were especially beautiful. I liked their ironic coupling with some relatively tranquil, pulsing music while the single slow-mo close-up of Jared was the only thing set to typical skate-video thrash.

[MoonlitKnight]

I found this to be probably the least impressive entry in Van Sant's 'meandering tetralogy' (though I haven't seen "Last Days," aka 'The NOT Kurt Cobain Film' ).

[oldsheperd]

I just got around to seeing this tonight. Alex is pretty much a poser. I spent most of my teenage years around the "skateboard community" and there are plenty of little cheap shots thrown into the film that points to Alex not being accepted into the scene. The whole thing where his friend Jarred gives him shit about his new deck is one.

The idea that he would have a completely new setup when his old one is fine is unaaceptable to some folks since he is generally regarded as not being a very good skater anyway.

As far as his homosexuality goes. In my opinion that's really beside the point. A nice thing to think about but it doesn'y really matter either way in regards to the film as a whole.

[Tark]

Extremely overrated, garbage.

[knives]

Right now I should be making a counter argument as to why PP is not 'overrated trash' but you've already proven yourself unwilling to look into the film, or at least see why someone would care for the film. So all I will ask is instead of making blanket statements elaborate your point next time, or even this time, but that will probably roll off of your back because you don't wish to understand other points of view.

Next you'll probably mock my post in some way, and this whole stupid mess will deservedly be moved into the infighting section.

Please though, one up me be making a mature and intelligent post. I do love being proven wrong.

[oldsheperd]

Paranoid Park seemed like a total deconstruction of narrative in my opinion. Elephant, Gerry and Last Days are narrative decontructions as well. Perhaps Van Sant will release a film in a decade or so that is really out of whack.

BTW is "Milk" pretty straight forward?

I would assume so considering it would be a bit more geared towards more of mass audience compared to his previous three works.

[knives]

Milk is very mainstream narratively speaking, but it has one very cool shot involving a whistle.
I actually like the idea that these past three films are deconstructions on narrative. The idea that he's working to find what makes narrative click, I suppose making it more of an examination of narrative, almost seems like a given, but I suppose I was too amazed but other things to look at them from that angle. The next time I watch one I'll have to look at that.

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

Just finished re-watching Paranoid Park - I wanted to re-evaluate the film since the first time I saw it (years ago), I felt it was just good. This time around, however, I felt it was great.

Very few films have captured what it feels to be a teen so well; the uncertainty, angst, etc. was quite realistic. The element that worked well for me is when some of the adults were talking to Alex (the detective in the beginning; his mother), you only saw his face; the focus was on him & the other teens (his friends, the other skateboarders, his girlfriend, etc.). IMHO the adults (teachers, parents, etc.) were the intruders in this world - you were seeing the world through the teens' eyes exclusively. At the house party scene when Alex was talking to some of the other skateboarders, one of them mentioned something like, "Anything an adult does is always connected with making money"....

Going along with what some other posters mentioned, I agree Alex's father should have been out of focus in the entire scene when they were talking; as it stood, in that scene he was in focus at the end - this slightly marred this whole sequence for me. I did like the fact that you never saw his mother's face up close; it was either from a distance, or she had her back to the camera - this goes along with the teen-centric viewpoint.

Like Elephant, I liked how the film played around with time; you saw some scenes twice at different times, or the same scenes from different angles.

I felt the sequences when Alex was talking to the would-be?! girlfriend in the coffee shop & mall quite realistic - she was trying to get him to open up/explain himself, and he was being evasive.....

The sequence when Alex

Spoiler

saw the security guard torn in half & laying on the ground was quite grotesque...not something you would expect to see in a GVS film...

Though I typically don't like the full-frame aspect in modern films, IMHO for PP it worked very well here....