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PARANOID PARK
Edited, Written & Directed by Gus Van Sant, based on the novel by Blake Nelson
Produced by David Cress, Marin Karmitz, Nathanaël Karmitz, & Neil Kopp
Director of Photography, Christopher Doyle & Rain Kathy Li
Released by IFC Films
France/USA. 78 min. Not Rated
With Gabe Nevins, Daniel Liu, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller, Lauren McKinney

It seems inevitable that Gus Van Sant would eventually make a skateboarder movie, considering his longtime love of teen actors and his abiding interest in youth culture. And it seems inevitable, too, that he would cast that movie by trolling the Internet for fresh faces using a MySpace page. Paranoid Park is Gus Van Sant’s version of Larry Clark’s Wassup Rockers – a portrayal of second- (or is it third-?) generation skater boys that appropriates the gritty, handheld, and often tedious DIY videos of that subculture. While Clark deals obsessively with sexuality, Van Sant is lured by the traumatic disconnection teens face as they find their footing in the world.

Alex (Gabe Nevins), a Portland boy, has accidentally killed a security guard while hopping a freight train. Shocked and frightened, he doesn’t tell anyone what happened – not his divorcing parents, his superficial girlfriend, his best friends, or the police. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love) creates a moody, ethereal atmosphere reminiscent of Elephant or Last Days.

In those films, Van Sant offered an eerily intimate view of some of the most publicized events of the late 20th century – the death of Kurt Cobain and the shootings at Columbine. Without that additional level of social commentary, Paranoid Park seems slow and disjointed, like a pile of cutting room clips from Van Sant’s better movies. Alex seems not only alienated and numbed by trauma, but vapid in a deeper sense.

Moments of strong filmmaking (such as a scene when all the skateboarders are called to the principal’s office and they flood into the hall, like a tableau from The Warriors) are diluted by long, meaningless, repetitive sequences and a few awkwardly campy performances (like Taylor Momsen as Alex’s pushy cheerleader girlfriend). Van Sant’s vérité pacing works better with projects like Elephant, when the story itself is more cutting. A slow pastiche of teen movie themes and images, Paranoid Park ultimately lacks the power and intensity of Van Sant’s other work, as if he’s gone too far in the dreamy direction of Elephant and into self-indulgence.

If I hadn’t known that this was a Gus Van Sant film, I might have given it less leeway. He’s a master filmmaker, and it’s worth presuming that his glaringly amateurish decisions are purposive. Unfortunately, Van Sant has lost his way. He’s drifted so deeply into the project of chronicling teen anomie that he has forgotten to create a meaningful film. It’s time for Van Sant’s pendulum to swing in the other direction again, for him to revisit the raw urgency and vibrant energy of My Own Private Idaho and To Die For. Elizabeth Bachner
March 7, 2008