Paranoid Park (2007)

"No one's ever really ready for Paranoid Park," says a friend to Alex, the main character of Gus Van Sant's quiet film, PARANOID PARK. This memorable line of dialogue, rich with narrative metaphor, spoke double for me. As a viewer, I'm not sure I was fully "ready" (read: appreciative) for or of PARANOID PARK.

Upon finishing it, I dismissed it as a film that did too many things that don't really appeal to me. Its elliptical structure -- filled with repeated visuals, out-of-sequence narrative and slowly-paced looped moments instantly struck me as "arty," but it wasn't "my kind of art."But then I starting thinking about the film, and I actually had to go back and watch it again. And it was at that point that I realized that PARANOID PARK might just be the mastery of Gus Van Sant's long-time pursuit of telling stories about "lost boys."

From male hustlers in "My Own Private Idaho" to the Kurt Cobain riff, "Last Days" to "Elephant," his take on Klebold and Harris of Columbine infamy, Van Sant has firmly established himself as the cinematic master of the lonely, conflicted and disenfranchized young male. Even when you throw in his mainstream, commercial features, the theory holds. "Good Will Hunting" features a young man with an extra something that sets him apart from the gang he hangs with. Van Sant's seemingly-inexplicable shot-for-shot remake of "Psycho" provided him with the chance to mess with Norman Bates, the ultimate in lonely, tortured young men. And "Milk," the Oscar-winning biopic that ultimately stole this film's thunder, featured a number of young men who were isolated from society and trying to adjust, however confident or not some of them were in doing so.

In PARANOID PARK, an unassuming skater kid figures out that he inadvertently had something to do with the horrible death of a security guard near a Portland skating park. The boy, Alex, must face the authorities when pulled out of class for questioning. He must also face a nagging girlfriend who decides at a bad time that the two should lose their virginity. And he has nothing to go home to but his slowly rotting family situation as his parents drag out the details of their inevitable divorce.

What irritated me at first about PARANOID PARK is that all of what I just told you is presented in a very jumbled-up way. Those events happen out of that order, and they happen multiple times. It's not a tidy film. Alex's decision to keep his involvement in the guard's death to himself means that the film...just...ends. So there is no satisfaction there. In fact, the film is incredibly slow and quiet. Though it clocks in at under 90 minutes, it feels longer because Alex's moral confusion and torture is scrambled and repeated for the audience.

Upon further consideration, though, I get it. And Van Sant presents with this film what might be the mastery of his long-worked-at little genre. Sadly, however, I doubt that too many will have the patience to understand it. Artistically, however, I'll go on record and say that this is a better film than "Milk," though no one will probably listen to me.

The cinematography in PARANOID PARK was the one thing that hooked me immediately and took no time to wow me. Scenes of the teens skateboarding are often shot in Super-8 and then there are moments shot in such crystalline 35-millimeter that the colors almost look enhanced, the film almost digital. You go from moments of home-movie blur to moments where you can literally identify individual blades of grass in saturated green. Cinematically, it's a beautiful film.

Ultimately, PARANOID PARK appears to be about little. It comes off as the film equivalent of a short story. A trifle. Not much action. Lots of artistic film making and character brooding. But Van Sant wants us to dig deeper. And there we find the very foundation of teen isolation. A nice boy, but lost. A genuine mistake, but deadly. A cover-up that will cost a boy his soul. Friends and family who can't really "be there" for him. It made me wonder how many boys like this walk through my classroom door every day.

When you think about it that way, PARANOID PARK is as heavy as "Milk" or any other film that lays on the drama and tells a much more viewer-friendly, cinematic story. This is a devestating grower, a film that sticks to your sides and makes you think. I realized that PARANOID PARK actually IS my kind of art, and I'm glad I saw it.

3.5 out of 4