Your parents are separated awaiting divorce, your girlfriend wants commitment for life, you are still in high school, and you have just accidentally killed a security guard and the police are closing in on you. Do you face the facts and tell the truth, or wait until you are exposed? This is the dilemma facing 16-year old Alex in Gus Van Sant‘s latest film ‘Paranoid Park‘ due for released onto the big screen this coming Boxing Day.
Based on the novel by Blake Nelson, ‘Paranoid Park’ revolves around the infamous skate park located on Portland, Oregon’s East Side. Of course, Paranoid Park isn’t its real name - it’s just how it’s known by the kids there - but it’s the place where all the top skaters go.
Teenager Alex (played by Gabe Nevins) is a ‘good’ kid from the nice side of town. He skates a lot but does not know if he is really ready to venture to Paranoid Park. Convinced by his skating buddy Jared (Jake Miller), they head to the skate park out of curiousity, but once there Alex starts begins question his own life to date. Does he want to commit the rest of his life to his girlfriend (Taylor Momsen)? Does he have his place in everyday society, or is he at home with the punks and skaters at the park?
After borrowing his mother’s car and parking it on the opposite side of the river (so it would not be damaged), Alex befriends a group of skaters and then one night accidentally kills a security guard. Overwhelmed by guilt, and with innocent blood on his hands (and clothes), Alex decides to banish the event from his mind. That was until a police officer comes to his school asking questions…
There are so many remarkable things about this unusual movie. For a start, director Gus Van Sant presents us with an array of characters that actors of many years’ experience would be proud of - a remarkable feat when you consider that nearly all the kids in the movie were recruited through MySpace.
Clips of skating action from the park of home-video image and sound quality are extremely well incorporated into the narrative and the inter-character conversations are set out of focus on only one of the participants so that the audience stays fixed to the action, taking on almost a voyeuristic status.
I never thought I would ever witness a gruesome on-screen murder set to the dramatic choral opening of Michael Jackson’s song ‘Will You be There’, but it worked terribly well, and I have to admit that the only bad thing about this film was the very comprehensive mouth-watering description of a Subway sandwich and its many fillings that made me very hungry indeed!
‘Paranoid Park’ is an excellent film, and despite making me wish I could skateboard and then suddenly stopping without following a more conventional structure or given us any real ending of sort, it will still manage to satisfy far more people than might otherwise venture into such an art-based film.
Unfortunately, this film will not be released onto all the big screens, but you can catch it at Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema from its release on December 26th.
For more information about the film, log onto the official website at: www.paranoidpark.co.uk.
But as one of the characters says to Alex, “No-one’s ever really ready for Paranoid Park…”
By Andrew Burgess
