PARANOID PARK
Director: Gus Van Sant Stars: Gabe Nevins, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller, Dan Liu, Lauren McKinney, Scott Green
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
Gus Van Sant has been making smaller, more 'cinematic' films in recent years, after his Golden Palm win in Cannes with Elephant (Gerry, Last Days). Here he is back in school, this time amongst a group of skateboarders. At a railway yard near a popular park, nicknamed Paranoid Park because it had an unsavoury reputation, a security guard has been killed on the adjoining railway tracks. Has one of the skateboarders been responsible? The police come to the school to question and get background for their investigation.
Van Sant focuses on teenager, Alex (Gabe Nevins), who we discover is writing a story about the park and skating. It emerges early enough in the film that Alex is responsible. What Van Sant does well is re-create the world of the adolescent, broken family and almost absent parents, friends, sexual experimentation (all with a soundtrack of relevant songs and Nino Rota/Fellini score, and with Christopher Doyle's realistic and stylised camerawork).
What we see is an ordinary young boy who is completely self-absorbed, has no sense of compassion for the victim, never thinking about him and with little conscience. This makes the film arresting to look at and listen to and very disturbing about contemporary moral sense.