There’s something bizarre about a skateboard movie. The principle characters, who are normally skateboarders themselves, would never be so droll to presume enough self-importance to think they were worthy of being the centre of the story, and worse still, they wouldn’t care. A very sanguine subject matter the existence of a skater, and any movie also faces an uphill battle in trying to capture the fluidity and skill of actual skateboarding. (I know from personal experience how difficult that can be.)
Enter: Gus Van Sant. Once a Hollywood wunderkind on the rise thanks to efforts like To Die For, Good Will Hunting, and the shot-for-shot redo of Psycho, Van Sant has gone deeper into his indie roots as of late, experimenting with a much more intimate type of cinema using minimalism on set as well as inexperienced actors found through social networking sites like MySpace. Interestingly, Van Sant’s new laissez-fair type of filmmaking is the perfect fit for this adaptation of Paranoid Park, a story about a young skateboarder that gets in over his head.
Van Sant’s native Portland, Oregon is the setting, more specifically O’Bryant Square Park in Portland’s downtown area, a frequent hub for the homeless and those seeking to engage in criminal activities, hence its nickname: Paranoid Park. The desolate, post-industrial landscape of the area around O’Bryant reflects the sort of Spartan nature of the movie and the seeming emptiness of the main character. With a monochromatic colour scheme, Van Sant seems to draw attention to an alarming kind of neutrality in Alex, the movie’s main character.
The story, such as it is, follows Alex (Gabe Nevins), a typical disenfranchised high schooler, that heads to Paranoid Park in order to impress some of the older kids that skate there. Once there, Alex sneaks away with a guy he just met to a nearby train yard where they start riding the freight trains only to attract the attention of a security guard. In the struggle, Alex pushes the guard who falls across the next track over and is killed by a passing train; bisected at the waist. Alex, feeling the guilt of what transpired ditches the evidence, his skateboard and clothes, and tells no one of what transpired.
The key to the film is understanding that it is not narrative per se, but rather Alex’s various attempts at reconciling what happened in his own mind. It takes a while for the viewer to realize that the story unfolding is not events as seen, but rather events as spun in Alex’s head. At first he doesn’t want to admit his involvement, but he soon comes to recognize his complacency. At the suggestion of his girlfriend Jennifer (Taylor Momsen), or is that “would-be-girlfriend,” he writes down what’s troubling him and it’s not until later that you realize that all the scenes of Alex writing are him trying to tell the story again.
This fascinating blurring of the lines between event and memory makes Paranoid Park such an interesting film to watch. It demands attention and if you don’t check yourself as the story unfurls, you’ll find yourself constantly trying to catch up. The nihilist approach to the story suits it, and I don’t know if the young actors are playing dull or actually are dull, but it works in favour of the movie and adds to the air of realism Van Sant’s trying to convey.
While Paranoid Park may be of an art house kind of flavour, it glides nicely along as an engaging, though occasionally challenging, story about confused morality. And to top it all off, Van Sant’s work wonders in capturing the skateboarding aesthetic; sometimes it seems as though they mounted the cameraperson on a board and let him rip. Brilliantly and efficiently small scale, this skate park is open to everyone.
