Alex, a teenage skateboarder, accidentally kills a security guard in the vicinity of Paranoid Park, a skate grounds on the outskirts of Portland. Rather than report the incident to the police, Alex decides to say nothing.
This thin plot is stretched for an hour and seventeen minutes, as Gus Van Sant's camera following his amateur actors over the course of a couple of days. Many viewers will be left bored, and find the story thin and undramatic, but I enjoyed it.
Gus Van Sant's intentions, I think, are to treat skateboarding as a form of escapism. Like drugs, alcohol or even film, skateboarding is Alex's way of escaping his dysfunctional family and depressing life. The boys at Paranoid Park are his kindred spirits. He feels comfortable around them. They all understand his pain. As such, Van Sant tries to portray skateboarding as a dreamy, slow, sort of ethereal trance. He wants us to know that skateboarding is like being lost in drugs, alcohol or even a good piece of literature. This is how Alex escapes the world.
Van Sant's second point is that all the problems in the film are simply due to a lack of communication. The plot itself is merely a metaphor for this theme. Alex feels troubled and trapped simply because he doesn't talk about the crime he committed. Likewise, he's forced into having sex with his girlfriend because he lets her do all the talking and he has problems with his parents because he never opens up to them. His parents themselves have marital problems because they fail to meaningfully communicate. Throughout the film, character's constantly misunderstand one another, or simply lie to avoid having to talk about something uncomfortable. Not only do they fail to communicate, but they fail to properly articulate their feelings and pain.
Alex then meets Macy, that compassionate female character who seems to pop up in all of Van Sant's "death films". Right away, she senses that there is something wrong with him. She sees the pain in Alex and recommends that he write his troubles down to get his problems off his chest. Alex does this (communicates to the audience) and the film ends.
The film has several flaws. Firstly, the way Gus Van Sant portrays skateboarding (a drug like daze) doesn't work. It just feels cheap. Secondly, his idea of Alex's confessional letter being the film fabric itself, feels half thought out. Alex writes his letter bit by bit, and the film takes this fractured approach. "Elephant" was structured in a similar way, but felt more confident. Thirdly, the story is too thin. The film is only an hour and seventeen minutes long, and yet at least ten minutes of the film feels like pointless padding.
Still, there's a lot of strong stuff here. Like "Gerry", "Last Days" and "Elephant", Van Sant uses amateur actors, which lends the film an interesting edge. Also his cinematography (by long time Wong Kar Wai cinematographer Chris Doyle) is always interesting.
Despite it's failures, "Paranoid Park" is a great little morality tale. Gus Van Sant seems to have tapped into the whole teenage-angst thing. His characters are all lost, trapped in an uncaring, unforgiving modern world, their parents distant and literally out of focus. They have nobody to turn to. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to console them.
And like Paul Newman says at the end of "Cool Hand Luke", all these problems are simply due to man's failure to meaningfully communicate. Our failure to properly empathise and our inability to ever know what's going on in another person's head. We're all trapped in our own little boxes, with our own little problems, and rather than reach out and share our pain, we bottle it up, thinking we're all alone. Gus Van Sant wants us to know that by sharing out problems and by helping one another, we'd have a lot less to worry and a lot less to be guilty of.
7.9/10 - A heavily flawed but well meaning film, made by an honest artist.
This thin plot is stretched for an hour and seventeen minutes, as Gus Van Sant's camera following his amateur actors over the course of a couple of days. Many viewers will be left bored, and find the story thin and undramatic, but I enjoyed it.
Gus Van Sant's intentions, I think, are to treat skateboarding as a form of escapism. Like drugs, alcohol or even film, skateboarding is Alex's way of escaping his dysfunctional family and depressing life. The boys at Paranoid Park are his kindred spirits. He feels comfortable around them. They all understand his pain. As such, Van Sant tries to portray skateboarding as a dreamy, slow, sort of ethereal trance. He wants us to know that skateboarding is like being lost in drugs, alcohol or even a good piece of literature. This is how Alex escapes the world.
Van Sant's second point is that all the problems in the film are simply due to a lack of communication. The plot itself is merely a metaphor for this theme. Alex feels troubled and trapped simply because he doesn't talk about the crime he committed. Likewise, he's forced into having sex with his girlfriend because he lets her do all the talking and he has problems with his parents because he never opens up to them. His parents themselves have marital problems because they fail to meaningfully communicate. Throughout the film, character's constantly misunderstand one another, or simply lie to avoid having to talk about something uncomfortable. Not only do they fail to communicate, but they fail to properly articulate their feelings and pain.
Alex then meets Macy, that compassionate female character who seems to pop up in all of Van Sant's "death films". Right away, she senses that there is something wrong with him. She sees the pain in Alex and recommends that he write his troubles down to get his problems off his chest. Alex does this (communicates to the audience) and the film ends.
The film has several flaws. Firstly, the way Gus Van Sant portrays skateboarding (a drug like daze) doesn't work. It just feels cheap. Secondly, his idea of Alex's confessional letter being the film fabric itself, feels half thought out. Alex writes his letter bit by bit, and the film takes this fractured approach. "Elephant" was structured in a similar way, but felt more confident. Thirdly, the story is too thin. The film is only an hour and seventeen minutes long, and yet at least ten minutes of the film feels like pointless padding.
Still, there's a lot of strong stuff here. Like "Gerry", "Last Days" and "Elephant", Van Sant uses amateur actors, which lends the film an interesting edge. Also his cinematography (by long time Wong Kar Wai cinematographer Chris Doyle) is always interesting.
Despite it's failures, "Paranoid Park" is a great little morality tale. Gus Van Sant seems to have tapped into the whole teenage-angst thing. His characters are all lost, trapped in an uncaring, unforgiving modern world, their parents distant and literally out of focus. They have nobody to turn to. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to console them.
And like Paul Newman says at the end of "Cool Hand Luke", all these problems are simply due to man's failure to meaningfully communicate. Our failure to properly empathise and our inability to ever know what's going on in another person's head. We're all trapped in our own little boxes, with our own little problems, and rather than reach out and share our pain, we bottle it up, thinking we're all alone. Gus Van Sant wants us to know that by sharing out problems and by helping one another, we'd have a lot less to worry and a lot less to be guilty of.
7.9/10 - A heavily flawed but well meaning film, made by an honest artist.