I'm playing some catch up, much like the narrative of Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park. Having endured Van Sant's Death Trilogy (Gerry, Elephant, Last Days) I've been waiting to see Paranoid Park, and its well earned appearance on quite a few top 10 lists this year has finally given me that final push to watch.
The film is very much a continuation of the seemingly art house Gus with its slow ponderous tracking shots courtesy of a first class DP (Christopher Doyle) and its barebones narrative which can be described in just a sentence. IMDB adequately summarizes the movie, "A teenage skateboarder's life begins to fray after he is involved in the accidental death of a security guard." And yet, this is a refinement of the previous three films where things feel much more resonant and meangful. Rather than set a single mood and tone like the aimless school hallways in Elephant or the endless desert trails in Gerry, each long tracking shot plums more emotional depth as we begin to unravel the narrative that Alex is presenting. Each time we repeat the same sequence which we have seen before, something Van Sant did really confusingly and annoyingling in Last Days, rather than feel like it's some trick to make the run time feature length, it just gets us further in the head space of Alex.
While the film starts out slowly, and a little confusingly with the narrative trick of the narrator realizing he should start a bit earlier, circling around the most major event, and it takes some time to adjust to the nonactors, the film is sublimely rewarding, and by the end, you as a viewer will feel the same release Alex has by telling his story. Really, like Slumdog Millionaire, this is another 2008 film that cleverly engages the audience through the act of storytelling itself.
Now bring on Milk.
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