Kids these days... they say the darndest things... or commit the darndest crimes. I can never remember which. For the second time this decade (2003’s Elephant being the first), Gus van Sant has returned to the halls of high school with a cadre of non-professional actors for Paranoid Park, an adaptation of Blake Nelson’s novel about love and crime in a Portland, Oregon high school.
Van Sant cast his actors by posting a bulletin on MySpace, a technique that worked wonders here and will likely reinvent the idea of a cattle call. Gabe Nevins makes his film debut as Alex, a shy, shaggy-haired high school kid doing his best to fit in with the older skateboarders who hang around the town’s notorious Paranoid Park, a skate park built illegally under a highway overpass. His friend Jared (Jake Miller) talks him into going there for the first time, and Alex eventually manages to hang out with some of the older skaters. Walking along the train tracks near the park at night, Alex and another skater decide to hitch a ride on a passing train; when a security guard tries to yank them off Alex hits him with his skateboard, accidentally causing the man to be cut in half by an oncoming train.
It takes a while for the film to tell this story, as it jumps forward and backward in time and doesn’t let the audience in on Alex’s guilt until about halfway through. The careful witholding of information immensely elevates the film’s tension, though, as the noose tightens around Alex’s neck and he constantly relives the night in question. Entire scenes are replayed, and change in meaning entirely with the new information; it’s a technique reminiscent of Hitchcock, whom Van Sant so oddly tried to imitate with 1998’s Psycho remake. Alex is a classic Hitchcock character, an ordinary man--well, boy-- thrown into extraordinary circumstances, and though he might ordinarily do the right thing and let the authorities take over, for one reason or another he doesn’t.
The film’s success relies on an accurate evocation of high school, and Van Sant nails it, from a boring image on the overheard projector in chemistry class to privileged kids enjoying their parents’ wealth without really being able to appreciate it. Taylor Momsen, who is currently on the CW’s outrageously unrealistic Gossip Girl, nonetheless puts in a great performance as Alex’s cheerleader girlfriend Jennifer, who doesn’t understand why he’s so cut off from the world, or why he doesn’t want to have sex with her. Momsen is the only professional in the teenage cast, but it’s a testament to her skill that she doesn’t stick out against the amateurs.
The languid, elegant cinematography from Christopher Doyle (much of the footage of actual skaters was shot on Super 8) and the electronic soundscapes from Ethan Rose add style to a film that could have felt like a mediocre senior thesis (while some of the non-professionals are great, others have a little work to do as far as line reading goes). Paranoid Park isn’t for everyone, especially anyone who still thinks skaters are good-for-nothing punks who take up valuable space on the street, but it is a well-told story that evokes genuine suspense and empathy, somehow, for the kids of privilege who throw it away to hang out in skate parks. I’m not sure how Gus van Sant keeps getting into the heads of current teenagers, but he’s too good at it to stop any time soon.
