Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Apr 1, 2016 12:28:38 GMT -5
Paranoid Park
Dir. Gus Van Sant
Premiered at Cannes May 21, 2007
Note: this review expands upon one I wrote after first seeing the film in 2013.
On May 14, 2007, The A.V. Club released an inventory of films that defined the decades in which they were made. Their choice for the 2000s was Spike Lee’s 25th Hour. At the time, the shadow of 9/11 loomed large, but in retrospect, it seemed a shortsighted choice: 9/11 shaped the decade, yes, but in unexpected ways, and for my money, no film captured it more perfectly than Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival exactly one week after that Inventory was written.
The plot is paper-thin, but still incredibly dark. Based on a novel by Blake Nelson, Paranoid Park tells the story of Alex (Gabe Nevins), a reticent teen skater who ventures alone to a dangerous underground skate park and is implicated in a gruesome murder. There are parts of this film that echo the lower echelons of art cinema. A sex scene recalls a more restrained Larry Clark, while there are long, pointless silences and audio experiments that bring back traumatic memories of Van Sant’s earlier film Gerry.
But Van Sant’s attention to detail is the biggest draw. Coming off his “Trilogy of Death,” Paranoid Park is a textbook example of the Instant Period Piece, a work that so perfectly and meticulously captures the era in which it was made that its datedness becomes its greatest strength. The bad skater hair, the girls dressed as ring-tailed lemurs, the little brother reciting lines from Napoleon Dynamite– everything about the movie screams “2000s,” and the sooner you realize that, the more enjoyable the film becomes.
Sign This Was Made in 2007: Everything.
Additional Notes
Next Time: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Dir. Gus Van Sant
Premiered at Cannes May 21, 2007
Note: this review expands upon one I wrote after first seeing the film in 2013.
On May 14, 2007, The A.V. Club released an inventory of films that defined the decades in which they were made. Their choice for the 2000s was Spike Lee’s 25th Hour. At the time, the shadow of 9/11 loomed large, but in retrospect, it seemed a shortsighted choice: 9/11 shaped the decade, yes, but in unexpected ways, and for my money, no film captured it more perfectly than Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival exactly one week after that Inventory was written.
The plot is paper-thin, but still incredibly dark. Based on a novel by Blake Nelson, Paranoid Park tells the story of Alex (Gabe Nevins), a reticent teen skater who ventures alone to a dangerous underground skate park and is implicated in a gruesome murder. There are parts of this film that echo the lower echelons of art cinema. A sex scene recalls a more restrained Larry Clark, while there are long, pointless silences and audio experiments that bring back traumatic memories of Van Sant’s earlier film Gerry.
But Van Sant’s attention to detail is the biggest draw. Coming off his “Trilogy of Death,” Paranoid Park is a textbook example of the Instant Period Piece, a work that so perfectly and meticulously captures the era in which it was made that its datedness becomes its greatest strength. The bad skater hair, the girls dressed as ring-tailed lemurs, the little brother reciting lines from Napoleon Dynamite– everything about the movie screams “2000s,” and the sooner you realize that, the more enjoyable the film becomes.
Sign This Was Made in 2007: Everything.
Additional Notes
- Regarding the Inventory article, a lot of the choices are debatable. As far as I’m concerned, the defining movie of the 1970s isn’t Nashville, but Dog Day Afternoon.
- As someone who actually was a teenager in the 2000s (and looked almost exactly like the main character), this movie’s depiction is eerie. The drab emptiness and boredom that comes with growing up but not having an outlet it is fully on display. The only other film I’ve seen deal with that aspect of adolescence also came out in 2007, but it’s a very different film, and we’ll get to that soon enough.
Next Time: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly