Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park is, it seems to me, a movie that is easy to misunderstand. A death serves as the ostensible center and motivator of the film's events. This death cannot exactly be called accidental, nor can it accurately be described as intentional, though it is investigated by the Portland Police as a murder.
The circumstances of this death are as follows: one Saturday night, teenage Alex goes to the titular skate park which was constructed extra-legally by local, disaffected skate punks on the banks of Portland's Willamette River. As he sits on his skateboard observing the other skaters he is approached by one of the park’s older denizens who asks if he would like to ride a freight train and then get some beer. A security guard observes the two 'men' as they climb aboard the freight car, approaches them and begins repeatedly striking them with his oversized mag-lite. Alex swings his skateboard at the guard, smashing his head and sending him reeling onto the neighboring tracks at the moment another freight approaches and the guard is gruesomely killed.
A Google search for references to Paranoid Park reveals some interesting interpretations of this event. The plot synopsis on IMDB reads, “A teenage skateboarder's life begins to fray after he is involved in the accidental death of a security guard.” The page devoted to the film on wikipedia.org describes Alex’s actions as being “[in] self-defense and confusion.” A review of the film found on HollywoodReporter.com describes the event in this way: “Alex accidentally caused the death of an older security guard down by the railroad tracks.” And in what is probably the least prescient response to the film, James Rocchi, in his review on cinematical.com, admits in one breath that he “wasn't expecting Paranoid Park to be a suspense film or a procedural,” then complains of Van Sant’s “staging of the murder.”
The variety of interpretations of this event is at least partially understandable. The narrative, as it were, takes the form of a long, rambling, non-linear confessional letter written by Alex at the suggestion of his friend Macy. This is a letter written by the sixteen year-old son of divorcing parents and not a Hollywood screenwriter. As such, events which, in the context of a movie, would be viewed as important, such as the circumstances of his parents’ divorce, are often treated perfunctorily, while events that might seem trivial in comparison, like the sandwich he ordered at subway on the night of the killing, are relayed with novelistic detail.
The particular effectiveness of this narrative style is just one of the remarkable things about Paranoid Park. Contemplating the film’s unorthodox narrative arc, one is reminded of the park’s skaters as they ride up and down the ramp, cutting back over the same territory, but this time from a different angle, with a different perspective, but always with athleticism and grace. It is a testament to the success of Van Sant’s adaptation of Blake Nelson’s novel that the film would not be near as effective if the events were presented in a more straightforward manner.
But the question remains: what is this film all about? Like several of Van Sant’s movies, Paranoid Park is partly about disaffected youth—and more particularly the relation between youth who are merely disaffected and those who have literally been thrown away. Alex lives with his mother in the suburbs and though his parents’ ongoing break-up has left him effectively unsupervised, he still has parents who at least play at being nurturing. The kids who built Paranoid Park, on the other hand, have no families and many of them live at the park that they constructed. There is a sense of menace in Alex’s interactions with these kids; when the man with whom Alex will eventually take his fateful train ride asks to use Alex’s board, he balks at first. When police detective Liu inquires if Alex went to Paranoid Park alone after his friend Jared decided to visit Oregon State on the night of the guard's killing, Alex replies that you don’t go to Paranoid Park alone. This snapshot of contemporary youth is important, but it merely scratches the surface of the film's themes.
That the circumstances of the security guard’s death pay more than a passing resemblance to the famous unmotivated crime in Andre Gide’s Lafcadio’s Adventures may provide a clue to a deeper interpretation of Paranoid Park’s significance. Gide used the notion of the unmotivated crime—in this case Lafcadio’s throwing Amedee out of a moving train for no apparent reason—as the extreme example of his libertarian views on freedom. Similar though they are, however, the deaths described in these two works are not exactly the same. Alex’s attack on the security guard may ultimately have been unwarranted, but it could not be described as gratuitous.
There are other aspects of the film, however, that point to a struggle within the character of Alex over his notion of freedom and its attendant responsibilities. Near the beginning of the film, as Alex and Jared decide to visit Paranoid Park for the first time, Alex explains that as bad as his life might seem, the kids at Paranoid Park had it worse. Abandoned by their families and alienated from the mainstream social structure, these discarded punks created meaning in their lives on their own terms. Skateboarding and the park they constructed both as locus of their activities and as their homes represented their own expression of their existential freedom.
What, then, is the significance of the security guard’s death and Alex’s retelling thereof? I sort of touched upon this earlier when I described Alex’s train ride as “fateful.” Alex’s telling of the events leading to and surrounding the security guard’s death lend to the events themselves a sense of the inevitable. This is a boy who is confronting his adulthood and its associated freedoms and responsibilities. What is worse, his tattooed father and negligent mother are remiss in their responsibility to help him deal with the changes he is facing. Alex’s lack of perspective on the nature of adult responsibility coupled with the utter failure of his parents to help him through this critical transition lead him to this sense of the inevitability, not only of the guard's killing, but also more quotidian events such as the loss of his virginity with his cheerleader girlfriend.
Another clue to this internal dilemma comes via two conversations Alex has with Macy. At one point in the film, Alex expresses the view that his own problems seem so insignificant in light of the continuing war in Iraq and the frightful circumstances under which people live in Africa. Somewhat later in the film (though the chronological sequence is somewhat difficult to divine), Macy asks him if he has been reading about the war in the papers. Alex’s response is abrupt and dismissive as he suggests that people who complain about the war don’t know what they are talking about. The paradox of Alex’s response to events in the larger world would seem to speak volumes about his ambivalence about the responsibility that comes with the freedom to act.
The circumstances of this death are as follows: one Saturday night, teenage Alex goes to the titular skate park which was constructed extra-legally by local, disaffected skate punks on the banks of Portland's Willamette River. As he sits on his skateboard observing the other skaters he is approached by one of the park’s older denizens who asks if he would like to ride a freight train and then get some beer. A security guard observes the two 'men' as they climb aboard the freight car, approaches them and begins repeatedly striking them with his oversized mag-lite. Alex swings his skateboard at the guard, smashing his head and sending him reeling onto the neighboring tracks at the moment another freight approaches and the guard is gruesomely killed.
A Google search for references to Paranoid Park reveals some interesting interpretations of this event. The plot synopsis on IMDB reads, “A teenage skateboarder's life begins to fray after he is involved in the accidental death of a security guard.” The page devoted to the film on wikipedia.org describes Alex’s actions as being “[in] self-defense and confusion.” A review of the film found on HollywoodReporter.com describes the event in this way: “Alex accidentally caused the death of an older security guard down by the railroad tracks.” And in what is probably the least prescient response to the film, James Rocchi, in his review on cinematical.com, admits in one breath that he “wasn't expecting Paranoid Park to be a suspense film or a procedural,” then complains of Van Sant’s “staging of the murder.”
The variety of interpretations of this event is at least partially understandable. The narrative, as it were, takes the form of a long, rambling, non-linear confessional letter written by Alex at the suggestion of his friend Macy. This is a letter written by the sixteen year-old son of divorcing parents and not a Hollywood screenwriter. As such, events which, in the context of a movie, would be viewed as important, such as the circumstances of his parents’ divorce, are often treated perfunctorily, while events that might seem trivial in comparison, like the sandwich he ordered at subway on the night of the killing, are relayed with novelistic detail.
The particular effectiveness of this narrative style is just one of the remarkable things about Paranoid Park. Contemplating the film’s unorthodox narrative arc, one is reminded of the park’s skaters as they ride up and down the ramp, cutting back over the same territory, but this time from a different angle, with a different perspective, but always with athleticism and grace. It is a testament to the success of Van Sant’s adaptation of Blake Nelson’s novel that the film would not be near as effective if the events were presented in a more straightforward manner.
But the question remains: what is this film all about? Like several of Van Sant’s movies, Paranoid Park is partly about disaffected youth—and more particularly the relation between youth who are merely disaffected and those who have literally been thrown away. Alex lives with his mother in the suburbs and though his parents’ ongoing break-up has left him effectively unsupervised, he still has parents who at least play at being nurturing. The kids who built Paranoid Park, on the other hand, have no families and many of them live at the park that they constructed. There is a sense of menace in Alex’s interactions with these kids; when the man with whom Alex will eventually take his fateful train ride asks to use Alex’s board, he balks at first. When police detective Liu inquires if Alex went to Paranoid Park alone after his friend Jared decided to visit Oregon State on the night of the guard's killing, Alex replies that you don’t go to Paranoid Park alone. This snapshot of contemporary youth is important, but it merely scratches the surface of the film's themes.
That the circumstances of the security guard’s death pay more than a passing resemblance to the famous unmotivated crime in Andre Gide’s Lafcadio’s Adventures may provide a clue to a deeper interpretation of Paranoid Park’s significance. Gide used the notion of the unmotivated crime—in this case Lafcadio’s throwing Amedee out of a moving train for no apparent reason—as the extreme example of his libertarian views on freedom. Similar though they are, however, the deaths described in these two works are not exactly the same. Alex’s attack on the security guard may ultimately have been unwarranted, but it could not be described as gratuitous.
There are other aspects of the film, however, that point to a struggle within the character of Alex over his notion of freedom and its attendant responsibilities. Near the beginning of the film, as Alex and Jared decide to visit Paranoid Park for the first time, Alex explains that as bad as his life might seem, the kids at Paranoid Park had it worse. Abandoned by their families and alienated from the mainstream social structure, these discarded punks created meaning in their lives on their own terms. Skateboarding and the park they constructed both as locus of their activities and as their homes represented their own expression of their existential freedom.
What, then, is the significance of the security guard’s death and Alex’s retelling thereof? I sort of touched upon this earlier when I described Alex’s train ride as “fateful.” Alex’s telling of the events leading to and surrounding the security guard’s death lend to the events themselves a sense of the inevitable. This is a boy who is confronting his adulthood and its associated freedoms and responsibilities. What is worse, his tattooed father and negligent mother are remiss in their responsibility to help him deal with the changes he is facing. Alex’s lack of perspective on the nature of adult responsibility coupled with the utter failure of his parents to help him through this critical transition lead him to this sense of the inevitability, not only of the guard's killing, but also more quotidian events such as the loss of his virginity with his cheerleader girlfriend.
Another clue to this internal dilemma comes via two conversations Alex has with Macy. At one point in the film, Alex expresses the view that his own problems seem so insignificant in light of the continuing war in Iraq and the frightful circumstances under which people live in Africa. Somewhat later in the film (though the chronological sequence is somewhat difficult to divine), Macy asks him if he has been reading about the war in the papers. Alex’s response is abrupt and dismissive as he suggests that people who complain about the war don’t know what they are talking about. The paradox of Alex’s response to events in the larger world would seem to speak volumes about his ambivalence about the responsibility that comes with the freedom to act.
A friend who had seen the film earlier pointed out that the Van Sant’s decision to eschew establishing shots takes a cue from Godard’s Hail Mary (1985). The effect of this is not only jarringly beautiful, but it also supports the impression that the events are told through the perspective of an adolescent. The cinematography by Christopher Doyle (In The Mood For Love) is also stunning. There is a shot in which we view from above Alex laying on the ground with his skateboard, his arms splayed to his sides as Macy approaches. This shot recalls Caravaggio’s The Conversion of St. Paul in the foreshortening of the subject’s body and his Christ-like aspect. Even more remarkably Caravaggio-esque is the shot near the end of the film as Alex finishes writing his letter. The room in which he writes is extremely dark, giving the fire-lit close-up of Alex’s face an almost angelic cast, recalling the painter's representations of St. John the Baptist.
Paranoid Park rivals the films of Robert Bresson for its beauty, complexity and for the sheer power concentrated in its 85 minute running time. It seems unfortunate that the film has seen scant attention in the major publications and those reviews that have appeared do not seem to have given it the careful, attentive viewing it warrants. Some reviewers have even remarked that Van Sant appears to be in a rut, going over much of the same territory he explored in his earlier films. This complaint echoes many of those made about the recent films of Wes Anderson. What these reviewers seem to ignore is that this is precisely what artists do: find a subject and repeatedly explore it in order to reveal new perspectives and deeper meanings.
7 comments:
I got plenty to say but I have to take a shit and then go to work, so I'll keep it quick..
-The Caravaggio connection is great and one I never would've thought of; the vague eroticism of the kids- lots of shirtlessness in the movie- also connects to Caravaggio.
-I liked how it seemed to me at least, to be a movie that is not the typical nihilistic youth- disaffected, yes- in the sense that Alex is troubled by it and confused by it. He's also not cool- nor is he square: When he tries to order a frappacino from a non-Starbucks coffee place or calls electronic music "techno", it seems to me, its Van Sant in a world of regular teens not hip ones, only kinda hip ones because nowzadayz, everyone's sort of hip.
-And the music! I really liked the weird electronics and the super-8 skateboarding.
brandon,
obviously there is a lot more to be said about this movie. i sort of thought i might write about it so i brought my notebook along but then i left it in the car so i had to take notes on the blank pages of book i brought (philosophy and social hope, no less). i definitely loved the super-8 skateboarding sequences . . . in fact all of the super-8 sequences were really effective in the sense that they absolutely captured the look of dream states. i mean, everyone always says that people dont dream in color but i dont think that is exactly true, i dream in color, but it is sort of muted and fuzzy and unreal like these parts of the movie.
but definitely, caravaggio and gus van sant are definitely two artists who know how to lovingly portray beautiful adolescent boys. i was really blown away by the effects they were able to achieve with the lighting in that particular scene at the end and in other scenes.
i also thought the still at the top of the blog was an great shot, almost like the wild bunch. these skaters are going to their meeting with the police detectives and out of one side of their mouths they say that there is no skateboarding community and then when there is a suggestion that a skater killed the cop, one says, "you think a skater did this?" which is like this community that is not a community thing, which is kind of like western outlaws.
oh, and you are definitely right about it NOT making a nihilistic interpretation of disaffected youth. he basically presents kids (and i mean the denizens of p. park, more than alex and his friends) that should develop a nihilistic attitude toward the world but they dont at all. but also, the more privileged kids are sort of open and honest about their naivete and it is affecting.
This movie sounds interesting. It's been a while since I've caught one of Van Sant's films...
Here's a negative take, which I read before reading yours.
"What these reviewers seem to ignore is that this is precisely what artists do: find a subject and repeatedly explore it in order to reveal new perspectives and deeper meanings."
I appreciate these lines. So many people, reviewers or not, seem to be obsessed with the idea that "artists" (by which they usually mean "cultural producers") should always be doing different things, or else they aren't growing "as artists". I call bullshit when I can be bothered to.
richard-
thanks for the comment and especially for linking that other post. obviously i do not see the film in the same way and i think that the review is precisely the sort of facile surface reading of the film i named in my post. we actually went and saw the movie again last night and i intend to write another post. i would be interested to hear your response if you make it to the movie (it's still at the charles, but who knows for how long).
I had looked at your blog before seeing this movie with you last night. So when I saw the shot when all the skater kids walking out into the hallways it might have had double effect on me. I thought that was a great shot and really presented them as a community even though they say 'we're not really a community.' Also, even though they say that they all seem to know each other and are all linked in a number of ways.
I liked your compilation of interpretations of the security guard's death. I kind of took for granted that it was an accident and didn't really think otherwise about it.
I hope you right another post on this because the idea that you brought up last night of Alex being an unreliable narrator I thought was really interesting. And please talk about the shower scene when the jungle sounds play. That part was awesome!
jesse-
thanks for the comments. i am trying to get another post together on this movie so keep checking. i think that skaters in the hallway shot is great because it has a sort of affinity to westerns like the wild bunch, which are also about communities that are not communities in the same way as these skaters are such.
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