The films often out-of-place score slowly builds as Alex (Gabe Nevins), pencil in hand, jots the words “Paranoid Park” into his notebook. The film cuts to a dreamlike sequence at a skate park where almost faceless skaters navigate their way through sunlight and shadows, over the ramps and half-pipes that shape their existence. It feels like a trance, a time when these people can forget about everything and just be. The granular discolouration continues as we follow Alex through a field until he sits down on a bench. Just like that, the dream ends, even if it is not over forever. He continues writing in his notebook and so his disconnected narration begins.
He tells us that his older friend, Jared (Jake Miller), suggested the two should go to Paranoid Park, an illegal skate park built under a bridge in Portland by the aforementioned lost cause skaters, to which Alex replies that he is not ready for. “Yeah, but no one’s ever really ready for Paranoid Park,” Jared says. Truer words have never been spoken and moody director Gus Van Sant uses this as a starting point for his latest homage to the dilemmas of adolescents told in an elliptical fashion that never boarders on anything less than captivating. Everything is given time to sink in and register and the repetitive aspect of the story – the back and forth movement between what is and what was – is not just an entertaining device, but an integral aspect into decoding the mind of a young man who is not even sure where his head is at.
Alex tells the story through his eyes, shaping the story on his own terms. He explains early on that he will not write down what it is he has to get out in order, but rather the way he remembers it. In other words, until he can process everything and come to terms with what ever it is he has done. He fills in details as we go along, about his life, his family, his friends etc. He goes back and forth correcting himself as he remembers certain aspects of the story or as he allows us to see the truth behind the lies he tells or exhibits to everyone else. It is quite often difficult to know exactly what Alex is thinking and what is on his mind because so many things are happening to him at once, and although I have not figured out every possible thought he may have had, I take comfort in my opinion that Alex did not know what he was thinking himself a lot of the time. Or so he would have us believe. His thoughts are elusive.
The story is less about spoken or written words, more about what is going on underneath the expression-less face of the film’s subject, and that makes it difficult to connect with Alex, some of the time. Van Sant is strikingly aware of the awkwardness of teenagers and how difficult it is for them to articulate thoughts and emotions. He approaches this story no differently. When he cannot tell anyone else what is going on in, Alex writes it down, but only after Macy (Lauren McKinney), his only friend who can see that something is wrong with him, tells him that it is the only way to get rid of the pressures of his conscience.
Alex is your typical teenager with all the perils that come with growing up such as the pressures of his virgin girlfriend (Taylor Momsen) to have sexual intercourse for the first time and his moving further away from his family and straight into the influence of his friends or peers. His parents are splitting up and his younger brother is emotionally unstable because of it to the point where he throws up his dinner. Something that happens with nearly all broken families happens to Alex too, he seeks emotional refuge elsewhere.
That is why Paranoid Park is so attractive to him, its inhabitants are in the same state he is and the park has become their home. It is the one place where nothing matters. The one place where everything just melts away and even if it is for the smallest moment of time, they are free from gravity that holds them to their problems. So it seemed to Alex at the time, before he knew that his experience at the park could lead to something bigger than he could handle, something larger than any amount of skating could make disappear.
A month after Alex and Jared’s initial daytime visit to Paranoid Park, Alex is called out of him Math class and he proceeds to walk from class down the hallway without a care in the world, teenagers are masters of concealing their emotions after all. He continues masking the truth when Detective Richard Lu (Dan Liu) questions him. The detective is investigating a murder of a security guard that occurred at a railroad track close to Paranoid Park. The case is linked to the skate park and it is suspected that someone from the park is responsible.
Alex provides all the perfect answers and even when the detective tells Alex that a skateboard with DNA evidence on it had been found in the river by the park, Alex does not even twitch. Detective Lu assures Alex that he understands Alex’s family situation and teenage ways, and lets him go back to class. Detective Lu may understand Alex to a certain point, but not as well as Van Sant does.
As disconnected as Alex would like to appear, the audience becomes fully aware of the guilt that plagues his immature mind, and when he gets nervous or anxious, the audience can feel it too. Van Sant is that quick at pulling you in and not letting go. Of course, it is not all his doing, his inexperienced yet, most of the time, fluent cast are mostly refreshing. At times, their inexperience make their lines come across as forced and not as natural as Van Sant would have liked, but it could just be that these teenagers are simply ordinary and not all that articulate at the best of times. The pure authenticity of the characters is admirable to say the least.
The way in which these characters are completely immersed in their surroundings is a wonder to behold. Cinematographers Christopher Doyle and Rain Kathy Li do not create this world but their touches are essential in providing the audience with the realisation that not everything is what it seems. Everything is given time to register with the audience through slow motion or repetitive imagery, and their differentiating between blurred Paranoid Park and the clarity of the other areas in the film is striking.
Gus Van Sant is a vessel for channelling the angst and troubles of young men, something he did so well in my favourite film of his, “My Own Private Idaho.” He is able to express so much without even having his characters saying anything, as if he can get them to connect with their characters in a far deeper way than meticulously reciting the lines from his screenplay. It is even difficult to think of them as “characters,” it feels as though Van Sant is simply allowing us to observe the life of this troubled teenager who accidentally gets in way over his head, as if it were real.
Newcomer Gabe Nevins is inexplicably capable of seeming unfocused and all over the place and at the same time he is able to convey a serenity that is probably brought on by the sheer helplessness of his character and his incapacity to wrap his mind around what he has done. I think that he felt that the investigation was going nowhere but the guilt was still there. As if the full extent of his actions were pulling him right back down to Earth, just like the gravity that eventually ends the momentary flight of those faceless skaters leaping into the air at Paranoid Park.