Paranoid Park

Saw Paranoid Park, a film from Gus Van Sant's "death trilogy."  This one was about a teenage skater boy who is questioned about the murder of a security guard.  The film is very teenager-y.  The main character's parents are splitting up and his best friend's parents are out of town.  They're skating under bridges and in empty lots, living in the periphery of society and in the shadows of the adults in their lives.  How can the adults understand the deeply idiosyncratic, deeply personal pains and anxieties of our heroes?  Even watching over their shoulders, with them performing for us, we can only start to understand.

The film is shot in a very understated, 70s sort of way with grainy footage and old fashioned diners.  There's a thick layer of incongruous music on the sound track - we start the film, for example, with backwards music-box music played over footage of skaters in a graffiti-spattered park.  The film is like a patchwork, sometimes the juxtapositions are great and poignant and  stirring but sometimes they're just confusing and jarring.  The whole thing is very unique.

The child acting is a little hit-and-miss.  The main character's girlfriend, for example, is not great.  She says every line as though it were its own scene.  Everything is individually pretty good, but the effect is choppy and jagged.  Similarly, sometimes the teenage patter is natural and wonderful but sometimes a phrase clunks and you can hear Gus's script talking through their mouths.  Similar to the other experiments of the film, it's hit and miss.

I really liked the film.  There are scenes that are so strange they have a sense of realness about them.  There's a scene where the main character is bopping along to rap on the radio and then we cut to him listening to classical music.  Giving that a try.  The film doesn't always succeed, but when it does it's gold.