Gus Van Sant is either a secret genius or some kind of reprehensible knave. I had the opportunity to catch Paranoid Park for a second time with some friends this past weekend and several new impressions came to me. Many of these are the sort of to be expected shifts in focus that one has with repeated viewings of a particular film. One in particular, on the other hand, is not and it is from this that my suspicion of Van Sant’s motives or intentions comes to play.
I had a sneaking suspicion upon my first viewing of the film that there may be something to the question of Alex’s reliability as a narrator. As you will recall, the film is presented in the form of a confessional letter written by Alex about his experiences stemming from a particular evening he spent at the eponymous skate park along Portland’s Willamette River during which he unwittingly caused the death of a railroad security guard. The story as recounted in the letter is not presented chronologically and several events are recounted more than once.
One such event is Alex’s return to the empty home of his friend Jared immediately after the killing. Once in the house, Alex removes his bloodied clothes and crawls half-naked across the floor to avoid being seen in the window, takes a shower and then puts on fresh clothing. The audience is presented with its first view of this scene early in the film, before we know what has transpired at the skate park. We only know the context of this event the second time around as it is shown as it occurred chronologically after the events at the park. There are a couple of red flags that pop up this second time around, however.
I had a sneaking suspicion upon my first viewing of the film that there may be something to the question of Alex’s reliability as a narrator. As you will recall, the film is presented in the form of a confessional letter written by Alex about his experiences stemming from a particular evening he spent at the eponymous skate park along Portland’s Willamette River during which he unwittingly caused the death of a railroad security guard. The story as recounted in the letter is not presented chronologically and several events are recounted more than once.
One such event is Alex’s return to the empty home of his friend Jared immediately after the killing. Once in the house, Alex removes his bloodied clothes and crawls half-naked across the floor to avoid being seen in the window, takes a shower and then puts on fresh clothing. The audience is presented with its first view of this scene early in the film, before we know what has transpired at the skate park. We only know the context of this event the second time around as it is shown as it occurred chronologically after the events at the park. There are a couple of red flags that pop up this second time around, however.
The first and most glaring inconsistency is that the clean clothing that Alex changes into after his shower is different than the clothes he was shown getting into the first time around. I suspected this fact but couldn’t be sure until Brandon pointed out a similar incident from another point in the film. When Alex and Jared arrive at Paranoid Park for the first time, the two of them sit down for a moment and discuss the park with their backs to the camera. Alex is shown wearing a skater t-shirt with a distinctive sort of check mark design. In the next moment, Jared gets up and begins to skate and the shot cuts to one of the several super-8 sequences in which the camera follows the skater as he traverses the park. The thing is, the skater that the camera follows is shown in the t-shirt that Alex was wearing when they arrived at the park.
Another problematic detail of this shower sequence is the very fact of the blood on Alex’s clothing. Immediately after leaving the scene of the accident, Alex notices that his hoodie and his t-shirt are liberally smeared with blood. It might appear that I am parsing things a bit here, but if you pay attention to the actual mechanics of the security guard’s demise as they are presented in the film, there is no reason why Alex should have come away with any blood on his clothing—unless, of course, if he somehow came to the aid of the security guard, which he clearly did not.
Early in the film, Alex is called out of his science class and into the office where he meets a man we later find out is a police detective. Detective Liu asks Alex a series of questions centering on his activities on the night of the security guard’s death, including whether he went to Paranoid Park on a particular Saturday night. Amongst other things, Alex claimed that he did not visit Paranoid Park on this particular evening. This scene is striking because Alex is somehow able to answer the detective’s questions with extraordinary detail and also because he doesn’t seem to find the very fact of the questioning to be at all out of the ordinary. When the detective finally explains to Alex (and the audience) the reason behind the questions—the apparent murder of the security guard—Alex feigns shock and surprise. A further notable detail occurs at the end of the session as Detective Liu pulls out his business card and asks Alex to contact him in case he remembers anything else about that evening that might be significant. The camera goes tight on that business card as the detective taps it on top of the corner of the grisly photographs of the severed corpse, thereby drawing his attention to these photographs which he did not show to him over the course of their interview.
Much later in the film, after the audience has witnessed the security guard’s death in grisly detail, there is a scene in which a group of skaters at the school, including Alex and Jared, is questioned by Detective Liu about this event. Because of the film’s non-linear structure, it is impossible to determine which of these two questionings happened first. The problem is, whichever of these interviews occurred first, details of the latter interview seem to make little sense. In both cases, the detective explains as though for the first time that he is there to investigate the killing of the security guard. If the meeting that occurred first in the film was also chronologically first, the detective would not have needed to ask Alex if he was at Paranoid Park on that particular night during the second interview. If the group session happened first, then the detective would not have needed to explain the reason for his visit to Alex during their second, solo interview.
One cannot completely discount the possibility that these problematic details were included arbitrarily. Van Sant’s much maligned remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is by now notorious for its near shot-by-shot reconstruction of the original. As fastidious as he was in this reconstruction, however, there are certain pointed details that were subtly altered—seemingly for no reason. Some of these details seem particularly insignificant—like the fact that Marion trades in her Ford for a Volvo in the remake, instead of another Ford as in the original or the fact that with the exception of the plate on her original Ford, all the vehicles’ license plates are updated to contemporary designs. Others seem to have more symbolic meaning—especially in the context of a Hitchcock remake—particularly the fact that when Marion returns to her home, she does not change from light to dark clothing as in the original--suggestive of her move 'into darkness'—but to an even brighter orange patterned sundress. Van Sant’s Psycho remake is an entirely different sort of exercise from Paranoid Park, however, and the changes in details in the former film seem to be more in line with his ultimate intention to faithfully reconstruct the film while updating it to contemporary cinematic expectations.
There are details concerning Alex’s interaction with the older denizen of the park, which may suggest a deeper significance to the inconsistencies noted above. When Alex arrives at the park alone on that particular Saturday night, he immediately sits down on his skateboard to watch the other skaters. The older man approaches Alex and asks if he will let him ride his board for a while. After initial hesitation, Alex agrees and the man skates off for a time. When the man returns, he asks Alex if he would like to ride one of the freight trains and get some beer. Alex sort of half-heartedly agrees and then the action slows and there is a lingering shot in which the pair look at each other and the man luridly smiles at Alex. This smile and the way the man’s eyes linger on his interlocutor lend a distinct sense of sexual menace to the scene.
Any suggestion that what actually occurred on that night is somehow different than what is shown is ultimately speculation. There are details in the film other than those I have discussed, however, which may point to an alternate sequence of events. An example of such is Alex’s almost inexplicable ambivalence to the sexual experience he shared with his erstwhile girlfriend. In the scene in which Alex may or may not be losing his virginity to his (virgin) girlfriend, he stares blankly at the ceiling while she sits astride him “doing all the work.”
N. B. – There is some contention over this issue of whether both Alex and his girlfriend were virgins prior to their shared sexual experience or if it was only the girlfriend who was thusly inexperienced. I had concluded that Alex was in fact also a virgin but when I presented the situation as such to Brandon, he indicated that the moment in Alex’s internal dialogue in which he explained that his girlfriend was a virgin and that this meant that she eventually would want to have sex and then things would get all serious suggested to him that Alex was sexually experienced. The fact is that this is another detail of the film that is ambiguous. Most of the other articles or reviews of the film that I have read refer only to his girlfriend as a virgin, though some pointedly describe Alex as “virginal.” The exception to this is an article appearing on Psychopedia, which overtly refers to Alex losing his virginity. In any event, Alex’s ambivalence toward what would normally be viewed as an all consuming event in the life of an adolescent boy might be indicative of his having recently been involved in the accidental killing of a security guard or it may suggest some history of sexual violence.
It could also simply be that the overwhelming nature of the events in Alex’s life at this time made his memory of them a little shaky. Remember that his parents are going through a divorce at this time and undoubtedly because of some sense of guilt over this affair, his mother seems patently unwilling to play any sort of supervisory role in her son’s life. Couple this with the usual foibles that come with adolescence and anyone could be forgiven for flubbing some details or even somehow idealizing events.
Another problematic detail of this shower sequence is the very fact of the blood on Alex’s clothing. Immediately after leaving the scene of the accident, Alex notices that his hoodie and his t-shirt are liberally smeared with blood. It might appear that I am parsing things a bit here, but if you pay attention to the actual mechanics of the security guard’s demise as they are presented in the film, there is no reason why Alex should have come away with any blood on his clothing—unless, of course, if he somehow came to the aid of the security guard, which he clearly did not.
Early in the film, Alex is called out of his science class and into the office where he meets a man we later find out is a police detective. Detective Liu asks Alex a series of questions centering on his activities on the night of the security guard’s death, including whether he went to Paranoid Park on a particular Saturday night. Amongst other things, Alex claimed that he did not visit Paranoid Park on this particular evening. This scene is striking because Alex is somehow able to answer the detective’s questions with extraordinary detail and also because he doesn’t seem to find the very fact of the questioning to be at all out of the ordinary. When the detective finally explains to Alex (and the audience) the reason behind the questions—the apparent murder of the security guard—Alex feigns shock and surprise. A further notable detail occurs at the end of the session as Detective Liu pulls out his business card and asks Alex to contact him in case he remembers anything else about that evening that might be significant. The camera goes tight on that business card as the detective taps it on top of the corner of the grisly photographs of the severed corpse, thereby drawing his attention to these photographs which he did not show to him over the course of their interview.
Much later in the film, after the audience has witnessed the security guard’s death in grisly detail, there is a scene in which a group of skaters at the school, including Alex and Jared, is questioned by Detective Liu about this event. Because of the film’s non-linear structure, it is impossible to determine which of these two questionings happened first. The problem is, whichever of these interviews occurred first, details of the latter interview seem to make little sense. In both cases, the detective explains as though for the first time that he is there to investigate the killing of the security guard. If the meeting that occurred first in the film was also chronologically first, the detective would not have needed to ask Alex if he was at Paranoid Park on that particular night during the second interview. If the group session happened first, then the detective would not have needed to explain the reason for his visit to Alex during their second, solo interview.
One cannot completely discount the possibility that these problematic details were included arbitrarily. Van Sant’s much maligned remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is by now notorious for its near shot-by-shot reconstruction of the original. As fastidious as he was in this reconstruction, however, there are certain pointed details that were subtly altered—seemingly for no reason. Some of these details seem particularly insignificant—like the fact that Marion trades in her Ford for a Volvo in the remake, instead of another Ford as in the original or the fact that with the exception of the plate on her original Ford, all the vehicles’ license plates are updated to contemporary designs. Others seem to have more symbolic meaning—especially in the context of a Hitchcock remake—particularly the fact that when Marion returns to her home, she does not change from light to dark clothing as in the original--suggestive of her move 'into darkness'—but to an even brighter orange patterned sundress. Van Sant’s Psycho remake is an entirely different sort of exercise from Paranoid Park, however, and the changes in details in the former film seem to be more in line with his ultimate intention to faithfully reconstruct the film while updating it to contemporary cinematic expectations.
There are details concerning Alex’s interaction with the older denizen of the park, which may suggest a deeper significance to the inconsistencies noted above. When Alex arrives at the park alone on that particular Saturday night, he immediately sits down on his skateboard to watch the other skaters. The older man approaches Alex and asks if he will let him ride his board for a while. After initial hesitation, Alex agrees and the man skates off for a time. When the man returns, he asks Alex if he would like to ride one of the freight trains and get some beer. Alex sort of half-heartedly agrees and then the action slows and there is a lingering shot in which the pair look at each other and the man luridly smiles at Alex. This smile and the way the man’s eyes linger on his interlocutor lend a distinct sense of sexual menace to the scene.
Any suggestion that what actually occurred on that night is somehow different than what is shown is ultimately speculation. There are details in the film other than those I have discussed, however, which may point to an alternate sequence of events. An example of such is Alex’s almost inexplicable ambivalence to the sexual experience he shared with his erstwhile girlfriend. In the scene in which Alex may or may not be losing his virginity to his (virgin) girlfriend, he stares blankly at the ceiling while she sits astride him “doing all the work.”
N. B. – There is some contention over this issue of whether both Alex and his girlfriend were virgins prior to their shared sexual experience or if it was only the girlfriend who was thusly inexperienced. I had concluded that Alex was in fact also a virgin but when I presented the situation as such to Brandon, he indicated that the moment in Alex’s internal dialogue in which he explained that his girlfriend was a virgin and that this meant that she eventually would want to have sex and then things would get all serious suggested to him that Alex was sexually experienced. The fact is that this is another detail of the film that is ambiguous. Most of the other articles or reviews of the film that I have read refer only to his girlfriend as a virgin, though some pointedly describe Alex as “virginal.” The exception to this is an article appearing on Psychopedia, which overtly refers to Alex losing his virginity. In any event, Alex’s ambivalence toward what would normally be viewed as an all consuming event in the life of an adolescent boy might be indicative of his having recently been involved in the accidental killing of a security guard or it may suggest some history of sexual violence.
It could also simply be that the overwhelming nature of the events in Alex’s life at this time made his memory of them a little shaky. Remember that his parents are going through a divorce at this time and undoubtedly because of some sense of guilt over this affair, his mother seems patently unwilling to play any sort of supervisory role in her son’s life. Couple this with the usual foibles that come with adolescence and anyone could be forgiven for flubbing some details or even somehow idealizing events.
