"Paranoid Park" Review - Written by TonyD

“Paranoid Park”
2008
**** out of ****
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Gabe Nevins, Jake Miller, Taylor Momsen


Before watching “Paranoid Park,” I spent an hour sitting through the mumbling words coming from Richard Jenkins in Tom McCarthy’s “The Visitor.” The film is considered to be one of the best films of the year, but I don’t understand how. I was falling asleep at my computer desk that I was watching it from. So when the hour mark passed, I came to the conclusion that nothing has happened in an hour’s time, and I decided to turn off “The Visitor” and go to watching “Paranoid Park,” because it couldn’t be nearly as boring as that snooze-fest. (Oh, and NO, I will NOT be reviewing “The Visitor.” You just got your review.)

And here is your review for “Paranoid Park.” To sum it up in one three-syllable word – brilliant.

“Paranoid Park” is the first of two Gus Van Sant films to be released in 2008. It premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the 60th Anniversary Prize, and was released in a few theaters earlier in March. It also played on IFC on Demand, but I wait for them on DVD instead of paying seven bucks to watch it. This is one of the very rare times that I will ever regret not watching a film on IFC on Demand. “Paranoid Park” is one of the best films of the year, and deserves your attention MUCH more than any of the films being released this week.

Alex (Gabe Nevins) has something on his conscience. One night after skateboarding at a skate-park called Paranoid Park, Alex and one of his friends hop on a train. A security guard catches them where they aren’t supposed to be, and he starts beating Alex’s new friends with a flashlight. In self defense, Alex beats the security guard in the head with his skateboard. The security guard falls over onto the other rail-road tracks, when an incoming train separates his head and stomach from his waist and legs. Everything links Alex to the scene of the crime, but his story “clears up.”

Meanwhile, as he tries to deal with what has happened that night, he goes through the usual problems that teenagers have. His parents (Grace Carter and Jay “Smay” Williamson) are getting a divorce. His girlfriend (Taylor Momsen) is still a virgin and wants to have sex badly. And then there is skateboarding. He doesn’t think that he’s good on it (lord knows, though, that he can last on a skateboard longer than I can), but after killing this security guard, he doesn’t know how he will ever be able to do it again.

The last bit is something that I came up with while I was watching the movie. There is something about the film and its subtext messages that leaves an effect on the viewer a long time after the film is over. The most impressive scene comes moments after he accidentally kills the security guard. As he walks across a bridge, his conscience begins speaking to him, and his thoughts start to answer back. The ironically nicknamed skate-park Paranoid Park isn’t named that for a reason. The name stands for the paranoia that lies among someone’s conscience.

The film is adapted from the novel written by Blake Nelson. I haven’t read it, and until today, I didn’t even know that there was a novel, but I’m strongly interested in it now. All I can talk about here is the script written by Gus Van Sant. There isn’t much dialogue here; much of it is due to the awkwardness in Gabe Nevins’s character. The film would be a twenty minute short-film, but by using the power of non-linear plot development, Gus Van Sant’s newest film stretches to the eighty minute mark. But I’m not saying like it is a bad thing like a lot of critics are. Truth to be told, I like the non-linear sequences. It adds a certain mystery to the story.

Most of the cast members, excluding Taylor Momsen, were casted over MySpace. This means that what we are watching are mostly inexperienced teenagers who couldn’t act. I’ve read reviews that had a problem with that, but because these actors had no experience, “Paranoid Park” works better. These are real teenagers that we are watching. They’re not homeschooled, no stunt-doubles are used to do their skateboarding moves, and they all have an awkward sense to them. The most impressive is Gabe Nevins. The kid held his own throughout the movie. It’s quite impressive how this teenager could carry a film without having any previous experience.

When it comes to knowing teenagers, Larry Clark and Gus Van Sant knows them best. With their cell-phones, drinking, sexual activity, and the feeling of doing something where anarchy is involved, teenagers are almost always the same these days. Gus Van Sant focused on just one kind of teenagers – the skaters. I’ve seen a lot of skaters that blast Emo music out from their earphones and wear tight pants, but most of these teenagers don’t really look like a lot of the teenagers that I’ve seen. This interested me the most because Van Sant understands that every little tiny group in the huge group of skaters isn’t all like each other. “Paranoid Park” is one of the best films of the year, and now I’m just looking forward to Van Sant’s next film, “Milk,” a lot more.