Paranoid Park

I’ve always been a Gus Van Zant fan, I mean To Die For, Drugstore Cowboy, the sadly prophetic My Own Private Idaho. After all isn’t it Gus we have to thank for the ascent of Ben and Matt in Good Will Hunting. Then there’s that unfortunate Hitchcock “remake” and well...uh, never mind. It’s 2008 and he’s back in Portland and has directed a moody adaptation of a young adult novel by Blake Nelson.

Alex (newcomer Gabe Nevins) is a lanky, silent skateboarder who wants to be cool, might even be on the verge of it...you can see his body stretching, his baby face strug-gling to catch up. With lots of tight, lingering close-ups we are invited to examine every pore of our ostensible teenage hero who becomes involved in a serious crime. Along the way we glide through his world. Brushing up, albeit briefly, against his best friend Jared (Jake Miller), his “girlfriend” Jennifer played with Queen Bee aplomb by Gossip Girls’ Taylor Momsen as well as his divorcing parents and a sibling. In fact we never even see his mother’s face, she remains a shadow. Some of the best fun is watching Jennifer bully Alex: into deflowering her, for example, because, well, he’s just as ador-able as Astin Kutcher. Yet her “whatever...shut up” attitude never penetrates. He’s remains as expressionless, as ever, even when his best friend chides Alex for breaking it off because well “it’s always better to get laid.” Of course there’s the pimply, punky girl Macy ( Lauren McKinney) who we see get begin to get under his skin as she seems to be able to read his thoughts and feelings, she’s partly there as a way into this inscru-table teenagers heart and mind.

But no one really knows what happened, except for the one partner in the crime who literally disappears. Or maybe the detective who comes to the school to interrogate the skateboarders does. The manner of storytelling is purposely non-linear and with cine-matographer, Christopher Doyle’s manipulation of film speeds Wong Kar Wai style, we are further separated from the traditional ebb and flow of narrative film. Van Zant, who edited as well, overlaps and replays scenes...putting the story together like a puzzle so that not until 3/4 of the way through do we see the main event which has been driving all of Alex’s action. I was happy to see this film nominated as best picture at the Inde-pendent Spirit Awards I watched the afternoon before the Oscars, especially Rainn Wil-son’s little “tribute” including skateboarding and a nice send up of the slow motion shower scene. Yes...there is a slow motion shower scene.>