Ken Park

Plot synopsis:
The opening of the film depicts teenager Ken Park (nicknamed "Krap Nek", which is his first and last name spelled and pronounced backward) skateboarding across Visalia, California. He arrives at a skate park, where he casually sits in the middle of it, sets up a camcorder, smiles, and shoots himself in the temple with a handgun. His death is used to bookend the film, which follows the lives of four teens who knew him in the weeks running up to his suicide.
Shawn is the most stable of the four main characters. He's polite and caring. Throughout the story, he has an ongoing sexual relationship with his girlfriend's mother, Rhonda. He casually socializes with her family, who are all completely unaware of the affair, including his girlfriend.
Claude fends off physical and emotional abuse from his alcoholic father while trying to take care of his neglectful pregnant mother, who never does anything to defend him. Claude's father detests him for being insufficiently manly. However, after coming home drunk one night, he attempts to perform oral sex on Claude, prompting the boy to run away from home.
Peaches is a girl living alone with her obsessive and overly-religious father, who fixates on her as the embodiment of her deceased mother. When her father catches her and her boyfriend Curtis on her bed about to have sex, he beats the boy and savagely disciplines her, including forcing her to participate in a quasi-incestuous wedding ritual with him.
Tate is an unstable and sadistic adolescent living with his grandparents, whom he resents and frequently abuses verbally. He is shown engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation during masturbation. He eventually kills his grandparents in their bed, in retaliation for his grandfather "cheating" at Scrabble and his grandmother for "invading his privacy". He finds that the act arouses him sexually. He records himself on his tape recorder so the police will know how and why he killed his grandparents. After finishing recording, he puts his grandfather's dentures in his mouth, lies naked in his bed, and falls asleep.
The film cuts frequently between subplots, with no overlap of characters or events until the end. As Tate is arrested for his grandparents' murder, Shawn, Claude, and Peaches meet and have sex as a threesome, while Gary Stewart plays. The ending finally reveals the motive behind Ken Park's suicide: he has impregnated his girlfriend, who responds to his suggestion of an abortion by asking if he wishes he'd been aborted himself. Realizing that he'd rather never have been born, he sets out to the skate park to kill himself.

Tags: violence, murder, romantic, flashback

Review:
"Ken Park" demands that the viewer suspend that response, look beyond any arousal or outrage generated from the explicit sexuality and focus on the relationships in the film (of which sex is merely the expression).
Living in Australia, there has been a lot of controversy about this movie, leading to the government banning it (and even forbidding it to be shown at film festivals, to intelligent, consenting adults), so I had some idea what to expect when watching it.The thing that surprised me was that there was almost none of the "explicit sex" that the tabloids and conservative politicians would have us believe.
Could it be that Harmony Korine's razor sharp screenplay, largely based on the personal experiences of some of director Larry Clark's friends and models, actually hit too close to home for a lot of people to admit ?Though the sleepy suburb in this movie might qualify as quintessential Americana by definition of many, I can assure you that the stuff that happens over there takes place all over the world.
Much more than simply courting controversy, Clark (and co-helmer Lachman) have crafted a beautiful, funny, touching, heartbreaking and absolutely haunting (those final frames with the titular Ken Park will be etched in my mind for life) work of, yes, art.A lot of older viewers have remarked that the film is somehow unfairly slanted in favor of the young characters (compelling actors the lot of them), rendering the adults as grotesque caricatures.
It seems as though Larry Clark's ideas for characters were just him thinking he wanted to push the limits of sex on film, and so that's what the characters are doing.
To someone like me who hasn't led a sheltered and fortunate life, well there isn't much difference, this film is pure shock value with absolutely no plot.It's possible to make a movie as shocking and graphic as this and still provide some sort of coherence and plot, but that's not Larry Clark's style.
It was as if he took Todd Solondz' Happiness, removed all wit, all semblance of plot and character development, and threw in a few explicit sex scenes for some shock value.After watching Bully and Kids, I have come to accept Clark's style of storytelling, however I felt that this movie went nowhere.
He's usually good at juggling multiple story lines that end up converging in a natural sense, but I felt that in Ken Park he didn't have a enough time to delve into any single character's storyline deep enough for the audience to become engaged with the characters, which to me is a crucial element in any good drama.When the 1h10 mark came around, I was more alarmed by the fact that there were only 20 more minutes in which to resolve the story than by the incest and murder taking place on screen.This failure was akin to Lukas Moodysson's A Hole in My Heart.
Too bad because I loved Kids, Another Day in Paradise, and Bully.Here are some of the "highlights": 1) a teenager (he looks like he's 15 yrs old) goes down on girlfriend's mother, 2) a kid (around the same age) blows his brains out, 3) A widower catches his daughter having sex with her boyfriend, beats the crap out of him, then forces her to put on her mother's wedding dress and marry him (the father)4) a teenager kills his grandparents 5) A teenager's father tries to go down on him.
I'm beginning to think that Larry Clark cares more about "pushing the envelope" by depicting exponentially more and more gratuitous teenage sex with each of his films than he does about ensuring any realistic plot.
If this was an attempt to tell a legitimate story it falls completely short of its goal, because at best this is a completely sanitized version of anything that could be truly called gritty reality, and instead falls into a category of no other purpose except to shock and titillate.There is one useful purpose that this movie does serve, though, and that is prove the universal truth that actors are whores who will do anything and everything in order to get their faces on celluloid and into the public conscience no matter what the price is to their personal dignity.Who were these peoples (actors) advisors?No *'s out of 10.
The actor playing the kid has about zero charisma, looking like he really doesn't want to be there.Then there is a story that I could actually feel something for, a boy whose father felt he was a disappointment.
Though the girl is smart, she doesn't show it by tying her boyfriend up while in her house counting on her father(who is obviously unbalanced), be away long enough to be undisturbed.The biggest point made about this movie was that it was showing how these people all had messed up lives, and sex was their only refuge.
"Look at me, Im controversial, woohoo" Im not a stuffy type and am very open minded but this is just not good..I mean I was a teenager once and have friends that still are and yes there is bad things that happen to kids but they all seem to be messed up in this fill and also leave tons of holes in the story.
There are some sex scenes, but they are realistic, aesthetic, and the percentage of the total film duration is small.The main focus of Ken Park is not the consequences, but the reasons why those teens have come to life such a life.
Ken Park goes several more steps in that direction.It's too bad, because there was a movie here to be made, with more focus on Claude and Shawn, and way less of pretty much everybody else -- a story of two kids who survive the minefield of dysfunctional suburban life that their friends don't, ending at the same place: with them wondering if they are better off than Ken Park."So who the hell are you to tell him how he should make his movies?" Ken Park is undeniably "art", in some form or another, and obviously Clark has the right as an artist to do what he wants, and as an artist, he owes his audience nothing.
Of course, I have seen Larry Clark's other films, and was expecting "Ken Park" to follow along the same path as say, "Kids"--following skater punks in their daily lives of sex, drugs, etc.And the movie does follow its predecessor.
It has a lot to offer for you though, when you consider yourself as especially decent or respectable or when you simply like to see sex in movies.So the "respectable" viewer could be shocked of this movie because of its explicit depictation of sexual encounters between teenagers and grown-ups.
The problem that I have with larry Clark and with his new film "Ken Park" is not the extreme sexuality and violence, that I can tolerate just fine, but his absolute embellishment of the truth, which he often claims that he is capturing.
His first film, "Kids," was much more realistic and acurate because it was freshly written by a then nineteen year old Harmony Korine, but this new movie just feels like left overs from that shoot so many years ago.
Clark has taken one good idea, which he used in "Kids," and tried to squeeze two more movies out of it, but unfortunatly for him and for anyone unlucky enough to sit through this garbage, his films have become little more than cliche ridden kiddie-porn.
It is directed by Larry Clark, who specialises in gratuitous sex and nudity for shock value, and seems to creepily delight in making films about teenagers.
Everything was set up for a good exposition of modern teen life with a profound ending.However, Clark can't help himself and, as the movie progresses, he starts to throw in the gratuitous sex and nudity he is known for.
Instead of a well-thought-out and crafted examination of teen life we have extreme and weird plot developments, just for shock value.It's not all bad though: some of the sub-plots (e.g. the Tate one) remain interesting and the ending is quite powerful and ties the movie together.Overall: better than expected, but disappointing because it could have been great..
I'd give it 6/10 but as far as the exploration of angst-ridden, depressive lives of teenagers in Americana goes, "Kids" or Harmony Korines "Gummo" are by far the better films (and don't even have the need for explicit, seedy and un-simulated sex)..
Larry Clark, who made the controversial teenage sex drama 'Kids', goes one step further with Ken Park by actually filming explicit sex scenes performed by a cast who look a lot younger than they actually are.Mix in the occasional moment of extreme violence, and the result is a shocking and sometimes uncomfortable viewing experience that makes one sometimes question the makers' motives.
I don't have the answer—but I do have my suspicions.The film opens with the bloody suicide of the title character (played by Adam Chubbuck), and then goes on to follow the lives of several other teenagers: Shawn (James Bullard), who is secretly banging his girlfriend's mother; Claude (Stephen Jasso), a skateboarder with a drunk bully of a father; Peaches (Tiffany Limos), a pretty girl experimenting with sex, whose bible-thumping dad believes her to be pure—until he catches her indulging in a spot of the nasty; and psycho Tate—messed-up mad masturbator and, ultimately, murderer.Ken Park's narrative is a collection of disparate ideas, connected only by the theme of dis-functionality in the family unit; the story cuts randomly from one character to another and by the end of the film, not much has really been resolved.
Clark directed Kids and guided the cast of young actors wonderfully thanks to his own personal experiences of adolescent recklessness and disregard for societal norms, while Korine, who was twenty-eight at the time, wrote the film still a part of that drug-driven, often reckless lifestyle.
Kids focused more on dialog and character relations, while Ken Park explores the same themes as in that film, but with much more visually shocking instances that capture the rawness of the adolescents' behavior.
Let me be straight : this movie is NOT for everyone, and not just because of the sex scenes, but because it is very hard to watch those characters struggling with their families and with life.
With no supervision, these kids seek for love and appreciable affection where they can find it : with their friends, drugs and sexual experiences.As always this is a Larry Clark film, so realism is at it's top level, and as always he makes all these stories, scenes, characters completely believable.
This is a lot like KIDS but it is much more watchable and interesting to me.I think the biggest thing this movie touches on is the need to deceive people who can't handle the truth because they are close minded judgemental idiots and the incredible confrontation that occurs when they finally have to deal with the truth that has been hidden from them because they simply don't deserve the truth.There are a lot of awesome characters and anyone that thinks these characters don't exist in real life is obviously one of those idiots that is being lied to by these kind of characters because if they knew the truth, they couldn't handle it.Highly Recommended if you like a teen angst reality ride instead of stupidwood..
I'm a fan of his earlier films "Kids," "Bully," and even the movie made after "Ken Park," "Wussup Rockers." There's something about his ability to visualize a scene using young and underused actors that can hold it together and play a scene through to the end, especially when the scenes involve heavy, adult-themed concepts involving drugs or blatant sexual acts.
I think it might be better if he stuck to one story like the rest of his works, but divide them up amongst the various groups, like Kids did, or even Bully.The problem I have with the groups who have reviewed this film always point at the fact that this wasn't released here in the U.S. because it was sexually explicit and too real of an experience.
Though the theme of twisted home lives may seem like perfect material for a chilling message movie, Ken Park manages to reduce the concept to nothing but shock tactics.
Well for starters, plot has never been Mr Clark's forte, and when you watch one of his movies you know that there's going to be a substantial amount of nudity; but while I can see one of the aims of the movie - i.e. demonstrating that the adults are equally (if not more) f***ed up than the kids - you do have to question the point of such a graphic masturbation scene.
The movie never stops shocking you, and with such wonderful characters that feel real [although I have never, ever seen Teens like this].
The rest of the characters play out like real teens, and towards the end, you realize that quite possibly the single most innocent character in the movie is Ken Park, despite what he does.
A movie where half of the film feels like a softcore porn is kind of a touchy subject, but for what its worth, I enjoyed it.7/10 Pros: Great acting, realistic families, flawed characters, shocking, and it keeps you interested.Cons: Some moments seem a bit, umm, pointless.
In Ken Park, the kids have so many other problems that their  explicitly filmed  sexual activities seem like a relief, like the last pleasant thing in life.
Parents and grandparents, for instance, play a very important role in this film, which is not the case in Kids.Now what is the message of a movie like Ken Park?
I was disappointed although the movie had all the hallmarks of Larry Clark's work: troubled teenagers, irresponsible adults and a lot of naked bodies.My issue with Ken Park is the focus on the dark side of humanity.
The reason I dislike this film, as I did both Kids and Bully (two movies that appear tame by comparison), is simply because once you take away the shocking aspects of it - the violence, the no-holds-barred sex scenes - it really isn't about anything much.
That we are watching dysfunctional families is beyond doubt, and perhaps is it that Ken Park did not want to end up like his parents that drive him to it, but I still think he could be left out.I understand it that we have an uncensored version in The Netherlands, and that really makes me ask what people saw in the cinema.
This means that while Clark is clearly very excited to pose his actors, he doesn't trouble at all with their characters, and this fixation on a physical presence (specifically of willing young men) that the viewer can't access becomes a black hole at the movie's centre.Many of the things that happen - a young man who kills his grandparents, a boy who sleeps with his girlfriend's mother, a young woman forced to marry her insanely religious father - could have been the basis of a really interesting film if only they were followed through: each one is a beginning or a conclusion, but none is a story.The characters don't develop or change, the situations don't evolve, what occurs is without causes or repercussions.
The last scene was just pathetic, being almost like something borrowed from a very bad porn movie...Oh yeah, something totally "realistic" and "deep".Ken Park is the worst indie film that I've ever saw.
And in fact the story of Ken Park doesn't come up with something completely new or original, it has pretty much the same same stories (alcoholic father, guy sleeps with his girlfriend's mother, severely religious father abuses daughter) the only difference to other such films is, that the directors show sexual organs in closeup view in almost every second scene.
Then we get to know the other people living in that area one after one, and everybody has a skeleton in his closet: One guy chokes himself while masturbating and kills his grandparents, because they got on his nerves and gets an erection while looking at the dead bodies, a father wants sexual contact with his own son after he comes home from a booze, another catholic father catches his daughter unprepared having sex with her boyfriend, beats him up and marries his on daughter as some sort of punishment.The film is definitely a bit entertaining, but the problem is, that the director doesn't really emphasize the character's feelings, he only pays attention to showing as much as possible provoking scenes such as showing sex and masturbation in closeup view.
Before I begin I must say, I'm not adverse to confronting films, of which "Ken Park" is surely one of them, but when I tell people that I don't like this movie I'm labeled a "prude" or that I "just don get it".
Ken Park is a melodrama-erotic film that are based on Larry Clark's journals and stories.
I watch it, because I thought, maybe it would be as good as portraying real life troubles like the movie 'Kids' with something new.
The first thing I'll say is that if the viewer is not familiar with Larry Clark's 7 (to my knowledge) other films and his style, then Ken Park is absolutely not the first one they should see.
As I watched the movie, he confirmed he had no real viewpoint, he just filmed a series of violent, trashy scenes together and called it "Ken Park".
There is one other normal kid in the film, but he too is almost violated by his gay abusive dadI don't know what really goes on in Larry Clark's head, all his movies are the same trash, putting minors in sexual explicit situations while he as the directors gets of making them get of.