Paranoid Park

September 29, 2008

Paranoid Park (2008) *****

Directed by Gus Van Sant

I’ve talked before in my reviews about my reservations regarding violence in movies. Since I was young, I’ve always been deathly afraid of being deathly afraid. My fear is that some image or action in a film might be so disturbing that I may be psychologically scarred by it. Therefore, when I begin to watch a movie that I know is going to have significant violence, I’m in total suspense from the beginning. I don’t know if my experience is different from everyone else’s but when I’m in suspense, it’s really unpleasant. Actually, it almost physically hurts.

Recently I have been watching every movie I wanted to see from 2007 that I haven’t seen yet. Many of these films like 300, Eastern Promises and Death Proof contain pretty severe bloodshed and gore. Because I’ve faced my fears watching these films and because I emerged from them psychologically unaffected, I’m now placing films on my radar screen that I never would have considered before a few months ago.

All this leads up to talking about the single most disturbing image I’ve ever seen in film. It comes from 2001’s In the Bedroom starring Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson. I won’t give away what happens in the plot during this disturbing moment since it’s a surprise twist which changes the direction of the entire film. I’ll still describe the image though.

The camera is extremely close up beginning with a character’s feet. Then it pans up his body in an unbroken shot. When his face begins to emerge, we see (extremely close up) that more than half his face is literally blown away. If I’m remembering correctly, his eyeball has been eviscerated as well. That’s how gruesome that image is, and worst of all, I wasn’t expecting it. If I know when to prepare myself for something gory or gruesome, I can usually relax because then I won’t be shocked by an unexpected image of horror. In the Bedroom didn’t prepare me, and as such, I was so disturbed while watching that I still think about this image more often than any other I’ve ever seen in a movie.

What does this have to do with Paranoid Park you may ask? On imdb.com’s In the Bedroom message board, I posted a topic mentioning that the image described above was the most disturbing I’ve ever seen. Someone replied by saying that there’s an image in Paranoid Park that’s even worse. When Chazz suggested Paranoid Park as one of the films he’d like me to review, I thought to myself, “Great! Now I will have a new image in my head haunting me for the next seven years!” Still, though, I wanted to watch the film considering that it will probably appear on many ten best lists at the end of the year. So this past evening, I sucked it up and began watching the movie. The suspense up until the disturbing image in Paranoid Park was especially uncomfortable.

Then the image appears on screen. All I’ve got to say is that whoever replied to my post couldn’t have been more wrong. The image in Paranoid Park, which is gruesome and which I won’t give away, is nowhere near as disturbing as the one from In the Bedroom. The thing that made In the Bedroom’s image so disturbing was the fact that it was shot in extreme close-up and contained unexpected mutilation. The image in Paranoid Park is shot at night, from far away, and it is set up well enough that I was expecting something sick to appear on screen. As such, I wasn’t too disturbed. That individual from imdb.com almost single handedly prevented me from watching this movie. Therefore, I’m infinitely grateful to Chazz for nudging me towards watching Paranoid Park. This film is the best film from 2008 I’ve seen at this point, and it’s also the newest entry on my list of the 100 Greatest Films I’ve Ever Seen!

In one sense, Paranoid Park is an unfolding mystery where we are given blurred details concerning a situation which is later fully revealed. Because of this, I am going to be vague regarding its plot. The movie centers around a sixteen year old skateboarder named Alex, played spectacularly by newcomer Gabe Nevins. People will probably disagree because of Nevins’ unrefined acting and understated performance, but I believe he’s worthy of Oscar consideration—he’s that good! Without realizing it, Alex has trained himself to become emotionally numb due to the pain he’s feeling regarding his parents’ impending divorce. Therefore, he and his friends escape from their harsh realities into the world of skateboarding.

He begins the film writing what seems like an essay titled Paranoid Park, referring to a seedy skateboard park on Portland’s East Side. At first it seems like Alex had a pretty normal evening, but after being questioned by a police detective about a murder near the park and after seeing photos of the dead body, Alex begins to write all over again two different times. Each new draft presents new pieces to the puzzle as Alex processes what happens until everything is made clear. Then the film concludes with Alex dealing with this situation, and through the heightened emotional state he’s in because of what happened, he’s finally able to confront other parts of his life which he hadn’t adequately dealt with before.

The entire film is shot like a low budget documentary and all of the performances are presented in a neo-realistic way similar to Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, another film about an apathetic teenager coping with life’s difficulties. At two different points in the movie, Alex’s mind wanders which allows the film to show a real life montage showing actual skateboarders performing tricks. The way Van Sant’s direction and screenplay present these scenes help us see Alex’s escape from reality which skateboarding provides.

There are blatantly poetic and surrealistic touches that play without an ounce of pretension. At times, Alex begins to see things and do things in slow motion. At one point, we hear Alex’s voice triplicated and overlapping showing us Alex’s confusion and panic. Also, Van Sant keeps us guessing before things are revealed. For example, I mentioned above that he’s seemingly writing an essay presumably for school. Later on, he mentions that his girlfriend is a virgin who has made it clear that she wants to have sex with him. At that point, I stopped believing that he was doing an assignment. Yet, what he’s writing and why is wisely withheld until the end which kept me guessing.

There are individual scenes that are refreshingly smart and surprisingly authentic in tone. One clear example involves a police detective questioning a group of skateboarding teenagers at their school. These kids make disrespectful jokes in just the right way. They’re testing the limits of what they can get away with this new authority figure. The detective is obviously intimidated by these wiseass kids, which I thought was brilliant. As a high school teacher, I can tell you that a group of teenagers can be extremely intimidating at times. Also, I know for a fact that teens are always testing authority figures in order to illicit a reaction. You’ve got to know how to deal with kids that age, and clearly a police detective doesn’t have the experience or the skills necessary to earn these teenagers’ respect. I’ve never seen a movie capture this idea so authentically.

Another great scene takes place between Alex and his girlfriend Jennifer, played by the only main actor with any previous acting experience, Taylor Momson. Momson played Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas and is presently a regular on Gossip Girls on the CW network. I won’t give away the topic of their conversation, but I will applaud the fact that Van Sant executed this scene with no sound. Instead, we see an uninterrupted inaudible shot of Jennifer reacting to what’s being said. Momson absolutely nails her performance in this scene. It’s one of the most satisfying touches I’ve seen in a movie in quite a while.

A final brilliant scene is clearly open for a lot of interpretation. It involves Alex’s thirteen year old brother excitedly describing to him what happens in a scene from the movie Napoleon Dynamite. We learn early on that his brother sometimes gets so upset because of the divorce that he throws up his dinner. I love how this scene reemphasizes Alex’s family problems by showing that his brother is also escaping from the harsh realities of their family situation. Also, because we transfer Alex’s brother’s pain back to Alex, we come to understand that Alex’s new problems are added to serious existing issues. You really feel for this truly descent kid.

Paranoid Park also contains an eclectic soundtrack including songs from all different genres, such as death metal, hip hop, classical, opera and folk music. Each song gets at the core of what Alex is thinking and feeling at that moment. As satisfying as the murder mystery is, I think Paranoid Park excels even more as a brilliant character study. Van Sant refreshingly shows us a fully realized fictional character simply existing in this unimaginably horrific situation rather than telling us what to think and feel. It’s wonderful to have a filmmaker totally respect his audience the way Van Sant does in this movie.

I’ve always believed that skateboarding is a wonderful thing for teenagers to get involved in. Most of the kids that I teach that also skateboard aren’t the sort that would feel at home playing sports or performing on stage. Therefore, they find their niche through this impressive activity. Not to be stereotypical, but I believe many skateboarders are the sort that tend towards breaking the law, so while they are skateboarding, at least they’re not causing trouble. It’s precisely when Alex isn’t skateboarding that he causes mischief resulting in profound tragedy. Paranoid Park paints a glorious portrait of the world of skateboarding through the fully realized character of Alex and the emotional obstacles he must skate past.