DVD REVIEW

Paranoid Park

IFC Films || R || Oct 7, 2008

Synopsis

An unsolved murder at Portland’s infamous Paranoid Park brings detectives to the local high school, propelling a young skater into a moral dilemma where he must deal with the consequences of his own actions.


Critique

I just got done watching Paranoid Park and I’m wondering … is there a point?  That’s a serious question.  I don’t ask that because I feel like I didn’t get the movie, I ask that because I don’t think there is one; there is deliberately, aggressively no point.

Gus Van Sant seems to arrived at a point in his career/artistic development where anything even vaguely resembling a point is no longer relevant, and as we arrive at the conclusion that there is no point to anything, so goes anything resembling a linear plot, character development, or any number of things we might expect to find in films made by a guy who, for a while there, was making some pretty linear, straightforward films.

Did 9/11 have something to do with it?  The question probably sounds ridiculous at this point, but if you look at what Van Sant was doing prior to that and the abrupt turn his style took with Gerry in 2002, well, you have to wonder.

Let’s look at Van Sant’s work up to 2000.  Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, two edgy, personal films that put him on the map, preceded the cinematic face-plant that was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.  Van Sant closed out the Clinton era at a steady clip of almost a film a year: To Die For, Good Will Hunting, a remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho (what the fuck?!), and Finding Forrester, a 2000 film that tread pretty much the same ground as Good Will Hunting.  (How funny that about a year later Kevin Smith released Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, a film which had the titular duo stumbling onto the set of Good Will Hunting 2, directed by – wait for it – Gus Van Sant.  Van Sant had pretty much made a sequel with Forrester.)

After Finding Forrester Van Sant didn’t make another film for two years, during which time the party ended and any sense of fun in the world took a nosedive.  Clinton was out and Bush was in, under questionable circumstances, the economy faltered, and nineteen guys from the Middle East decided that the Twin Towers were a moral eyesore that just had to go.

Man, you lapse into an existential crisis just thinking about the last few years.  Seriously, what is the point to anything?  Why bother if the rug is going to be inevitably, randomly pulled out anyway?

Randomness has become the hallmark of Van Sant’s work since Gerry.  In that film, two friends are out for a nature hike when they take a wrong turn somewhere (so randomly they’re not even sure where it happened) and end up wandering through a wasteland, slowly dehydrating until one kills the other.  The camera just follows them … and follows them … and follows them … and that’s pretty much the film.  It’s almost Warhol-esque how we’re basically just watching these guys.  Two guys wandering off the path, realizing it, and continuing to walk in the same wrong direction even as their situation gets worse and worse, well, you can find the metaphor for yourself.

2003 saw the release of Elephant.  The randomness worked best in this film because we knew what was coming, and having the camera following each student, jumping from one to the other took on a greater depth.  The banal become much more profound.  But look at the film: we randomly follow student, two of them walk into the school and start shooting at random, and that’s pretty much the end.  There’s no motive, no point to it; it’s just something that happens.

Last Days (2005) recreates the final hours of Blake, a Kurt Cobain stand-in.  We know what’s coming here too, but the randomness does not add to the film at all the way it did with Elephant; here it is just tedious.  The film is dull to the point of being nearly unwatchable.  

All three of these films are inspired by real events, to the point that the films start to feel like reenactments.  Paranoid Park may or may not be based on real events – I have no idea – but it follows this kind of random, ho-hum, what’s-the-point style that has marked his recent style.

Alex is a disaffected kid, bored with pretty much everything but skateboarding.  The film jumps around, but the gist of it is that a rail yard security guard has been found dead and foul play is suspected.  There is little mystery here because we spend most of the film following Alex and his friends while they skate, and there is a flashback early on that shows Alex killing the guard in an accidental, innocuous, random way.

One would be tempted to think that certainly something has to come of this, but don’t expect too much.  The film meanders and then just ends.  There is no point to any of it, which may itself be the point.  Either Van Sant is saying that pointlessness is the way of the world, or he is trying to show us a group of people who haven’t the interest or the wherewithal to find one.  Either way, none of it is interesting enough to hold much attention.


Video

Paranoid Park is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  That’s right, full screen, which is supposedly how the film was shot.  Who knows.  The picture is sharp, and the film’s natural color tone is well rendered.


Audio

This disc is presented in English 5.1 Dolby Surround.  The audio is crisp, particularly in the skate park scenes, where we hear every clop of grinding trucks and wheels hitting concrete.  The channels are clear and well balanced, and the overall presentation is sharp.


Special Features

Zilch.


Final Thoughts

Paranoid Park is decent film but nothing extraordinary.  The film’s deliberate pointlessness catches up with it and we’re left to wonder why we should care.  The lack of bonus material doesn’t help either.

VERDICT: RENT IT

 

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Review posted on Nov 2, 2008 | Share this article | Top of Page

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