Paranoid Park

Plot synopsis:
Alex (Gabe Nevins), a 16-year-old skateboarder, rides a freight train clandestinely with a man named Scratch (Scott Patrick Green) whom he has just met at the Eastside Skatepark, known as "Paranoid Park". While the train is moving a security guard (John Burrowes) notices the pair, chases after them, and tries to get them off by hitting Scratch with his flashlight. During the melee, Alex hits him with his skateboard and the guard, losing balance, falls onto another track into the path of an oncoming freight train which cuts him in half. Alex tries to destroy some of the evidence. For example, he throws his skateboard into the Willamette River from the Steel Bridge, and when he arrives at his friend Jared's (Jake Miller) house, he showers and disposes of the clothes he had been wearing.
Alex is later questioned at school by Detective Richard Lu (Daniel Liu), as are several other students who had been skateboarding on the night in question. It is revealed that the police have recovered Alex's skateboard, though they have not traced it back to him, and have identified DNA evidence which places the skateboard at the scene of the security guard's death.
Throughout the film Alex keeps the incident to himself, and does not confide in anyone else. After having impassive sex with his girlfriend, Jennifer (Taylor Momsen), he breaks up with her. Another of his friends, Macy (Lauren McKinney), notices that he is worried about something. She advises him to write down whatever is bothering him as a cathartic release if nothing else. He initially rejects the idea, but eventually writes an account, which becomes the basis for the story. After completing the written account, Alex burns it.

Tags: romantic, murder, flashback

Review:
Only here, it's probably more of a quiet, detached malaise that has within it a soul that is being sort of killed away piece by piece by the secret he holds.The teen is Alex (first timer Gabe Nevins), who was mostly responsible for the (very) grisly death of a security guard while he and a not-quite acquaintance from Paranoid Park's skating scene were riding carelessly along a slow-moving train.
He feigns interest in a girlfriend (ditzy Jennifer played by Taylor Momsen), hangs out with his skater friends like Jared (also first-timer Jake Miller), and writes in a journal with a narration that's a mix of detached Travis Bickle and, well, awkward teen.What interested me was a mood I found Van Sant, intentionally or otherwise, was working with.
Actually, there's a lot of slow-motion, sometimes of walking, or ruminating, and as it builds with the narration and the mix of stark and experimental cinematography from the great Christopher Doyle (great at, you know, these kinds of art-house films), as part of Van Sant's method of character study.Alex's inability to connect, with friends, parents, authority figures, even his own impulse to release his inner thoughts, however brief and to the point ("I'm not much of a creative writer," Alex admits), is what is meant to absorb the viewer into Paranoid Park.
For Van Sant, no matter what the excesses of the light touches of music (mostly from Nino Rota and Elliot Smith), or the slow-motion skateboarding (which I could go either way on as a casual admirer of the sport), or the bits that seem to have not much to do with anything aside from following a character in the midst of some thought (i.e. Alex on an escalator), it works as a feat of art for expressing its character, in the relatively short running time, like no other filmmaker would.
For me, however, this short, low-key film left a deep-impression.The non-narrative structure of the film means that the action on screen cuts back and forth in time around a central incident in which Alex, played by Gabe Nevins, causes the death of a security guard on a train track in Portland, Oregon, where the film is set.
I quite enjoy this approach to story-telling although it does seem to be increasingly common (see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Memento, et al).The cast, apparently consisting of local teenagers with little background in acting, turn in some fine performances, especially Gabe Nevins in the central role of Alex.
Scenes in the film are interspersed with camcorder footage of teenagers skateboarding around Oregon, which is a novel touch and in keeping with the feel of Van Sant's films, which are realistic but more dreamlike than gritty.A special mention should go to the soundtrack in Paranoid Park, which is one of the strongest features of this film.
So often, parents of these children say such things as, "we did that when we were your age," or, "I can relate to what you are going through," but what these parents often fail to recognize is that although the things we encounter may be similar the times as Bob Dylan would say, "are a changin'." To capture the particular mindset of the youth of today is a feat in itself, but to do so and provide entertainment as well deserves at least a brief look.The film Paranoid Park itself seems to capture this way of thinking better than the previous two films.
The film feels like music on its own.Park's story is about the death of a security guard in Portland's industrial district, very close to an infamous skate park named Paranoid Park.
Much like Van Sant's, Drug Store Cowboy, the director treats the various locales in Portland as a second character, showcasing the unique flavor of the city without coming across as a film commissioned by the Oregon tourist board.The young lead in the film, Gabe Nevins, in what is perhaps his debut film role, has the uneasy task of carrying the film.
After turning his back on the mainstream 6 years ago with his striking yet spurned two-man tale, Gerry, acclaimed writer/director Gus Van Sant delivers once more in refined style with his own eccentric yet poignant spin on the teen' movie genre.Adapted from Blake Nelson's best selling novel and shot masterfully in Van Sant's hometown of Portland, Paranoid Park hinges on an act of acute violence.
The film itself, then, is largely told from Alex's perspective as he goes back and forth in his mind and notebook in an attempt to vindicate his tainted conscious and make sense of why and how things happened the way they did.With the chronology of the omniscient narrative skewed and certain scenes misleading, Paranoid Park establishes a near perfect balance between form and content.
At the age of just 15, Nevins' not only performs with a quality beyond his tender years and experience, but provides a leading performance that is as convincing as it is impressive.As for Van Sant, his tight film-making skills are exhibited throughout in what has to be considered as an experimental picture wherein an uncanny blend of hand-held, slow-mo' scenic inter-cuts, out-of-sync shots and mellow off-screen alternative music carve a moody yet nonchalant atmosphere that at times suggests that this is an independent crime-mystery drama, at others: a tale of boy becomes man.
Gus Van Sant continues his trend of making dreamy, artsy mood-pieces with Paranoid Park, a film about a skateboarding teen who accidentally causes the death of a security guard.
It's not really about the plot but about the way different people deal with the aftermath of tragedy, which can be all the more difficult in the confusing teenage years, and if you considered it boring, i suggest you get a copy of Transformers or perhaps Die Hard 4 as you're clearly not concentrating!!Fabulous film from a director who really knows how to photograph beautiful shots..
Gus Van Sant's ongoing exploration of the lot of disaffected teens continues with this slow, dreamlike study of a typical teenager (newcomer Gabe Nevins) whose life is thrown into emotional turmoil when he accidentally kills a security guard.This film has a number of strengths and weaknesses.
In addition to the same scenes playing twice, Van Sant also treats us to long (and frequent) slow motion sequences of nothing in particular: school-kids walking through their school's corridors, Alex's friend driving his car, kids at the eponymous skateboard park showing their stuff in grainy 8mm.
Either way, his character provokes responses that range from sympathy to exasperation in the viewer, which ultimately leave you wishing you could step inside the story to bang a few heads together and get things moving.Fans of Van Sant will probably love this film, but very few neutral viewers will be converted to his style of movie-making..
But its in the things you don't see that gives this film its 'paranoia', conversations shown only from one angle, overlaying speech in the wrong places or playing music to mask over important conversations, there are times when it genuinely feels quite unnerving as the story, which isn't told straight, un-weaves to its conclusion.
Van Sant has used no real actors for the film and instead enlisted real skaters mostly found from Myspace, so don't expect the acting to be brilliant but it does give a sense of 'real' to the proceedings and of course they can skate which makes the dreamlike sequences around the parks all the better.
The story follows Alex, a young skater who is involved in the accidental but brutal death of a security guard in a train yard nearby the infamous Paranoid Park.
The skateboarding "culture" is so old hat and uninteresting, and the "crime" at the centre of this chopped up mess is such a non-event, that I wonder what it was that Gus van Sant saw in the story or why he raised the money to make it into a movie.Avoid this film!
The talentless lead is a string-bean with a messy head of hair and a determination to keep his feelings hidden from everyone, including the viewer, with a face that never changes expression.The authority figures around him aren't given too much to do but at least bring some semblance of morality to the tale.Summing up: The arty mobile shots are merely pretentious and the film does nothing for the reputation of Gus Van Sant or his so-called actors.
The name Gus Van Sant should be a label of quality - and I agree when I have in mind Good Will Hunting or Milk or My Own Private Idaho - but the movie in question has uninviting script, slow course of events, and uninviting actors (teens were apparently selected due to their skateboard skills and "cuteness" only).
If only the aging director weren't so blinded by his adoration for the young  maybe then he could see that he wasn't showing us his dreams but rather his fantasies.From the moment the film opens on a static shot of cars passing over a bridge in time lapse photography, you know that you're about to see that other kind of Van Sant movie.
In Gus Van Sant's quietly disturbing "Paranoid Park," teenagers look, sound and act like teenagers, with all of the awkward inarticulateness that comes with the age.
For this I applaud Van Sant, and it's largely what makes "Paranoid Park" such a compelling viewing experience.The awkward teen at the center of Van Sant's film is Alex, a lonely kid trying to articulate feelings and emotions he doesn't yet have the adult vocabulary for.
The general misery of being a teenager, the pressure of having sex with a girlfriend who drives him nuts and parents in the middle of a divorce would be bad enough to deal with, but Alex inadvertently causes the grisly death of a rail yard security guard, and the guilt that haunts him sends him fleeing to an interior world he already knows too well.Van Sant does a good job of constructing his film to resemble the inner workings of a distracted teenage mind.
Paranoid Park is an unpredictable, fresh film from Gus Van Sant that tells the story of introspective-teen Alex's struggles with life as he gets involved with the killing of a train station security guard.
Skateboarding Portland, Oregon teenager Gabe Nevins (as Alex) is troubled after a sleep-over invitation from hunky pal Jake Miller (as Jared), who has offered to take him to a place called "Paranoid Park." Mr. Miller advises, "Getting laid is always better than not getting laid." On the night in question, a security guard is killed in the park.
The plot rests on a remarkably few pivot points and by the end I was surprised by how much had happened when it seemed like nothing had happened.The teens in this film seem real; I think Van Sant understands how teens actually talk to each other and interact.
The skateboard park that Alex is attracted to ("I could sit all day and watch") is key to his personality--he is more of an observer than a participant.I can see how some would find this movie pretentious and obtuse (Van Sant certainly does not hit you over the head with whatever it is he is trying to express), but it is a unique piece of work worth consideration..
I had seen just one movie by Gus Van Sant so far,Elephant, and I can assure you that he kept all his mannerisms while doing this one.Once again he crosses time lines.Once again he uses weird filming techniques like the never-ending shots of people walking...maybe you like these filming techniques, I know I don't.
Though the acting may seem amateurish, the very inarticulateness and fumbling improvisations of the actors recruited from MySpace, more fully captures the real world of adolescence than contrived Hollywood and Indie productions with self-confident, articulate teens moving to a formulaic script.Similar to Van Sant's Elephant, the film is shot in non-linear fashion.
Though Van Sant at times tends to focus his camera on Alex in a way that aestheticizes him and his depiction of adults as out of touch and insensitive borders on cliché, in Paranoid Park, he has nonetheless fashioned a poetic and heartbreaking film that pulsates with the truth of deeply felt experience..
Inside director Gus Van Sant's experimental movies,Paranoid Park is the best one.I had not liked Elephant and Gerry...I had found them boring and pretentious,and they did not lead anywhere.I liked Last Days but it had not completely satisfied me.But,now in Paranoid Park,Van Sant gets a better balance between an experimental style and a slow tone.But,definitely this movie is not for everyone.Paranoid Park has a very good atmosphere which made me feel I was inside the movie.Van Sant's direction is precise and detailed.The performances are phenomenal.All the young actors from this movie are very natural and they really impressed me on some difficult scenes.The slow tone is completely justified because that helps for making us perfectly know the characters.Some scenes may seem incoherent at first but they tell us important aspects about this characters.I had said before this movie is not for everyone.Although the slow tone is justified,I know it will tire many people,specially the casual spectators and I also have to warn that not many things happen in this movie.It's more the study of a character.So,Paranoid Park is a brave experiment I liked pretty much but it certainly is not for everyone..
Long takes, slowed down shots, guttural linguistics and nervy amateurish performances may ruin the film for people who are unable to simultaneously watch, think and intellectually digest what they are seeing on screen.As always in Van Sant's work, authenticity is the backbone of the film; the skateboarders in Paranoid Park are skateboarders in real life.
I thought "Paranoid Park" was going to be a good movie because of the critic's reviews I had read , but after the first few minutes I watched it I knew this was going to be a very boring experience, and at the end I was right it was terrible, I felt I had lost 85 minutes of my life .
Gus Van Sant once again shows his interest in adolescent angst and solitude in Paranoid Park, a film about a skater kid who accidentally kills a security guard near one of his skate parks, and must then live with the guilt.
When he isn't busy making commercial movies for a mainstream audience ("Good Will Hunting," "Milk"), Gus Van Sant is out there toiling away on the fringes of American cinema, creating low budget, highly idiosyncratic works for a niche market ("Gerry," "Elephant," "Last Days").In "Paranoid Park," which has been derived from the novel by Blake Nelson, Van Sant sets his sights on the skateboarding underclass of Portland, Oregon.
The majority of the movie is focused on Alex's attempts to both maintain the secret of what he's done and cope with the overwhelming guilt caused by the incident.Like many of Van Sant's movies, "Paranoid Park" is guaranteed to leave certain members of the audience cold, frustrated by its lapses into artiness and the deliberately amateurish nature of many of its performances.
Yet, at the same time, Van Sant's characters seem to move through life as if in a dream, emotionally detached from the world around them, an effect achieved, stylistically, through slow motion photography, a time-shifting narrative, and an eclectic musical score which includes snippets of Nino Rota's pieces from various of Fellini's more phantasmagoric films.Without a whole lot of contrivance or fanfare, "Paranoid Park" presents a credible and haunting view of teenage life in America today..
What makes Gus Van Sant's films interesting to watch is to guess where he's trying to morally place his characters within an indifferent universe.
Mostly because it's the same Gus van Sant, who brought us the amazing My Own Private Idaho.Paranoid Park is a true coming of age story, which intersects with an investigation of a horrible crime that occurred somewhere on the way.
"Paranoid Park" is one of Gus Van Sant's finest films.
Going into my first viewing of Paranoid Park, I was expecting to be disappointed by long and drawn out skating cut scenes that take away from Van Sant's beautiful style.
I'm not a Gus Van Sant fan, but I have to admit "Paranoid Park" got under my skin: it's a fascinating film.
uh, I mean Gus Van Sant's fascination with teen boys is taken to the hilt in "Paranoid Park", as he follows his unfathomable Tadzio-Raskolnikov: the introspective, sexually ambiguous and emotionally muted skateboarder named Alex, played by Gabe Nevins, whose blank Botticelli face and blasé demeanor hide his character's soul-searching turmoil.
While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer (Taylon Momsen), Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience."Paranoid Park" is a disappointing movie of director Gus Van Sant.
I went to see this film with high expectations to the "Muestra International De Cine", in part because of Elephant (2003) that is my personal favourite of Gus Van Sant.The film is similar to Elephant in the part that show to us the "real" life of an adolescent.Paranoid Park follows the life of Alex, a young boy who loves skateboarding, when his life change because of a murderer.But this film is not only about a murder and those kind of stuff, is about real life; show to us a world where adults don't know nothing about their own child's and for me that is very real.In the case of the main character, Alex, his parents are going to divorce and he spend his life with his friend Jared and his girl Jennifer.
Gus Van Sant's tale of a skateboarder who's life spins out of control when he is park of an accident that kills a security guard in a train yard.
'Paranoid Park' is the new Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting).