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.
8 comments:
I have not seen this movie, but this analysis is interesting enough that I want to ask some questions and make some comments.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve heard that Van Sant has a reputation of having homosexual undertones in his films, along with the casting of very “pretty” younger men – whether these two things are interchangeable, I don’t know. I really have not seen enough of Van Sants work. When I read in the first post about the scene where the older man invites Alex to come drink beer on the train some red flags went up for me and I hadn’t even seen the movie so I didn’t know about the overt feeling of sexual menace.
I would be willing to predict that something other than beer drinking happened on the train. If you add up the creepiness of someone much older hanging out at a skate park frequented by 16 year olds (which is a somewhat sexual predator thing to do) and then add in the whole lurid smile things aren’t looking so innocent. Also, in the first post when the security guard shows up it is said that he just immediately starts hitting these two with his flashlight. Why would he just start beating them? The only reasons I can think of is that either Van Sant wanted to have a straightforward reason for the audience to believe Alex killed in self defense because this guard was just so villainous and unreasonable OR the guard saw something going on between Alex and the other guy that rubbed his inner homophobe the wrong way.
Do we see the older guy anymore in the film after the security guard is killed?
David, you forgot one other part that Van Sant changed in Psycho. He noticeably has Vince Vaughn masturbating when looking in on Marion. He probably just did it because he could.
katherine-
yes, you are basically right about the homoerotic element to many of van sant's films--sometimes these are, as you say, undertones, but often they are more overt or simply the thematic material of the film. this is the thing that kind of gets me, these days it seems that van sant is frequently criticized for his obsession with tender young (male) faces, while 25 years ago he was lauded as a harbinger of a new vital movement in queer cinema. is it politically incorrect to be gay suddenly? is the problem that the men are young? white? i'm not sure, but its stupid . . . the fact is, all people have their own particular views of beauty and van sant is very talented at representing his own.
as far as the initial interaction between alex and this older dude, i wouldnt exactly say that it was an overt sense of sexual menace, though it is definitely there. the thing about the park as it is represented is that it is a place built by these sort of castoff punks and they use it as their home and the center of their activities. in this context it doesnt seem all that strange that there are younger teenagers as well as older men--and by older, i would say this dude was like 30-35.
as the scene plays out in the film, the two barely get on the train before the security guard approaches them, so in that sense they didnt even have time to drink any beer (which they didnt appear to have anyway). but as my post suggests, there is definitely ample reason to distrust the absolute accuracy of the events' portrayal. for all anyone knows, the "truth" could be that the situation played out very differently, but that still nothing sexual occurred, which is why i tried to avoid spelling it out in that way (thanks, brandon). oh, and no, after the security guard dies, the older dude takes off running and we never see him again. of course this doesnt mean anything except that this is how alex portrayed the event. blah blah blah.
i suspect you are right about the intention behind bates's masturbation in the latter psycho--van sant himself indicated that he would change some aspects of the original in order to contextualize the events for a contemporary audience's sensibilities.
you know, thinking about it a bit more, i think where van sant gets into trouble is that he makes movies that have an unmistakable homosexual current to them, but they arent really political. they are sort of post liberation gay movies that really deal more with the concerns of the homo-id as opposed to the homo-ego?
I finally caught this today at a university theater, I noticed the reaction to stains on the shirt and couldn't figure out what he was fussing about either, since his version didn't include any assistance to the security guard. Beyond that I became more concerned with why he wanted to tell the story than how he wanted to tell it. It reminded me of crimes and misdemeanors without the premeditation, in which he realized he would have to live with it forever regardless of what anyone else thought or did, and after initial fretting over a confessorial need decided otherwise and moved on.
The distance that grows between him and the characters seem to be mutual as opposed to directly influenced by the burden of having murdered someone, more out of him realizing this distance and exploiting it during a very critical time in his life. Every character he comes across seems to have selfish intention in contact with him and the murder almost allows him to dispose of contact with anyone. I can only think of his girlfriend's sexual intentions as an example, but Jared had something, too.
I also couldn't help think of the homosexual undercurrent in light of Van Sant's reputation, and the scene in the car with his friend Jared caught my attention as well. It wasn't a main point in the film, but Jared denigrates Alex's board as one for fags before he gets in the car but then spends the ride looking at him. The music was loud and I couldn't figure if the conversation was muted or if the scene was supposed to highlight his friend's sexual leanings. His friend was constantly talking about getting laid, too, and making sure he and Alex were up to speed on each other's sexual progress, and his comment about staying in for the sex was the one that lingered longest after Alex breaks up with girlfriend.
The comment on his girlfriend wanting to have sex did strike me as a way to present that he had sex before, but if homosexual undertones enter the fray it could possibly be his sexual ambiguity talking instead. But I'd discard that because I thought his eyes were elsewhere when they were having sex because he has a severed man on his conscience.
And yeah, I couldn't understand why a complete stranger would want to hang out with some 16 year old kid and leave his two friends behind. Or why Alex would agree to do that, besides, say, wanting to infiltrate paranoid park's somewhat familial subculture without seeming like a novice. (but I wouldn't want to get to an analytical dead-end where it's like "the burden of murder is a metaphor for the burden of realizing you are gay")
I also assumed he left the cheerleader for the hot topic girl who talks about the war because he wanted some connection with someone who thought about more than having sex, despite dismissing her comments once, he still hung on to her for advice, and though chronologically it's shown first he comes to her later almost mimicking her words on world affairs to help relay his problem to her. The focus on their hands on the bus seats showed more tension on her end, but he also had sex already and was thinking of a dead body.
It was also curious that he was never part of the super 8 footage until after he burns the confession. Most of the film it seemed that the super 8 footage was like him slipping further and further away from the skateboarding life, the one cutaway in particular when he's on Jared's bed was affecting because it actually felt like a dream that was now totally out of reach. Then at the end of the film, there he is, finally a fixture in the grainy proceedings.
I also thought the inclusion of references to the war in iraq and to africa was a possible fuck you to criticism he might have recieved for making long, indulgent films that didn't comment on anything socio-political. That great, all it amounts to is a shared opinion. Now let me make my movie about the existential crisis of a young skateboarder caught up in possibly accidental murder.
I was also, on a tangent, curious about that filmmaking goldmine which is adolescence. I had watched an interview with Emir Kusturica on the When Father Was Away on Business dvd earlier in the day and he said he told the story through a 6 year old's eyes because that way he could make it more universal. But something in the way this film showed high school just reminded me of how often people in their adult stages are staging films about budding sexuality and other awkward experiences of youth, reimagining constantly those four years before legally you are supposed to be on your own.
Isn't adulthood also confusing and weird?
Any way, yeah, it was good, made me rethink a little how I felt about editing and soundtrack tricks. I've been watching Romanian and Iranian films (well only one Iranian film) and i've developed a taste for tales told straight cold.
p.s. wanted to send compliment for your good two posts on it, I was somewhat looking to delve deeper in to the film at some point but dropped it immediately after because I had to make it to a friend's house to watch season two of the wire (soooo late, but I'm marathoning it). You bring up a lot of good points. (Though I have no idea if Van Sant was attempting to stage a Caravaggio!)
The author of the book claims it's supposed to be like a retelling of crime and punishment but in youth setting, but crime and punishment had a premeditated murder, like thought out and fussed over before intentionally carried out, that (spoiler!) eventually caught up with the main character, aside from his conscience, by way of a knowing and sympathetic detective, and in the epilogue resolved itself with some kind of christian redemption that went beyond authority and other people and went straight to god.
I haven't read the book on which it's based and I haven't read any interviews with Van Sant where he might expound on why he chose to use the story to explore what themes.
I was wondering though, the stuff Brandon said about the movie, is it posted anywhere or did he say it to you directly?
ha!
not particularly revelatory or anything, but it suggests it's not entirely offhand to read into it in such a manner. From the Darghis review in the NY times -
"In some respects Paranoid Park represents adulthood; the critic Amy Taubin has provocatively suggested to Mr. Van Sant that the film’s subtext is that of a gay initiation. (He didn’t disagree.) "
He didn't disagree by entirely avoiding the comment -
I read the subtext of your new film 'Paranoid Park' as a gay initiation: the nice suburban kid is attracted to these skaters from the other side of the tracks who have a touch of criminality. And the relationship between sex and criminality is something you find throughout Warhol.
You're always taking your life experiences and rolling them into one piece of work. And as you continue making art, you become more refined in the way you do it. Usually my appreciation of an artist is when they are in their own work but you feel all the influences at the same time.
I'm quite late on the uptake here, but I remembered seeing this post somehow from No Trivia. Finally saw the movie and going over it in my head. Thinking back, the older guy who takes Alex on the train ride is fucking horrible at skateboarding and is wearing like boots or something instead of sneakers. Which would suggest that he's not a skateboarder or regular at the park and just there to stir up shit.
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