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Premise: I was understandably worried and curious when I saw the words "the masterpiece by Gus Van Sant" on posters and trailers. Why? Simply because you don't know if it’s true or not. Maybe you go see it, and it turns out to be a dud, but not going at all leaves an indelible curiosity. In all other cases, I would have chosen not to trust it, but ever since this film was introduced to me, I knew I absolutely had to see it, hoping for a sort of "sequel" to the wonderful "Elephant." And I attended the preview.
"No one will ever be ready for Paranoid Park." So reads one of the first lines of the film.
This skate park is presented to us as a magical place for all skaters in Portland: they say there are really good people inside, and you get enchanted watching people do stunts. That’s what they say. Van Sant, on the other hand, shows it to us completely "naked," a park without people killing themselves in circus acts, but rather full of degradation and sloth. An ordinary place, just a bit dirtier.
Alex goes there for the first time with a friend of his, and he says he is fascinated by it. That’s what he says. But his face doesn’t agree. Alex’s face is (apparently) expressionless, and it will remain so throughout the whole film. Alex is a passenger of life, accepting things as they are. His parents are about to divorce, and he simply says, "There are much bigger problems, like the war in Iraq, world hunger..." In reality, he doesn’t care about the war. He has other things on his mind.
For example, that he has just killed a human being.
Now let's briefly open and close a parenthesis: do you remember "Elephant," with its fragmented structure (almost Tarantino-like), based on reconstructing the facts before the high school massacre? Well, one of the few similarities (and the differences, trust me, are many) between the two films is precisely this. "Paranoid Park" opens after the crime has been committed: subsequently, through flashbacks and flash-forwards, the pieces are put back together to understand the entire mechanism.
But I don't like "mechanism," you know? Because Van Sant’s films have absolutely nothing mechanical about them. So let's say the course of events. But you know, I don't even like "events." Because in "Elephant," events occur one after another. In this latest endeavor, the director doesn’t reconstruct a historical fact, a real event. The involuntary murder by Alex (I won't add anything about the plot, I swear) is not the fundamental point of the film: what concerns the director, and the attentive viewer, are the emotions this debut actor (Gabe Nevins) manages to convey with truly hallucinatory strength, without moving a facial muscle. It is his eyes that speak for him. And it is incredible.
This time, Van Sant truly has all, and I mean all, the cards in order for a film to be passed on to posterity. An extremely effective cast precisely because it is completely spontaneous (and the director has understood well that he benefits from this), the music contradictory for the type of scene they are linked to: and then the GENIUS, INCONTESTABLE, and MASTERFUL, based on many small style tricks that make it all a pleasure for the eyes.
Moreover, it should be noted that the gaze is much less "icy" than in "Elephant": here we find a significant hint of participation in the scene, with the emotions it entails. Some slow-motion scenes (example: the shower one, where with water Alex tries to wash away the past - a homage to his remake of "Psycho"?) are much more eloquent than a lot of meaningless chatter.
Obviously, the audience circle is very narrow. As with few other modern authors, the interest that may exist for a slow, almost static film, focused on a single event, is not really for everyone. And here too, the discourse is valid for the parallel with "Elephant".
Parallel, yes, but absolutely not analogous. It talks about young people, but in ways that are too different to equate them.
Moral of the story: Gus Van Sant emerges fully as one of the best directors of our time, in dealing with engaged themes that few handle so well, while others don’t address them at all.
I thought about it for a long time, I kept repeating to myself: "wait to say which is better, you liked the other one a lot too, and it’s no less." Both are fabulous films, but there is a step up in superiority for this one. An overwhelming film, for its way of speaking to us, without uttering a single word. And not many manage to appreciate this, unfortunately. Ah, people these days, who can’t stand sophisticated, complicated, intricate films, blah blah blah...
I feel obliged to move the quotes to the beginning: no one will ever be ready for "Paranoid Park," the masterpiece by Gus Van Sant.
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