Paranoid Park (2007)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Text: Matt Bochenski
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Why is it that fifty-six-year-old Gus Van Sant can ride the elusive swell of teenage angst when other more youthful directors wipe out?
Whatever the reason, Paranoid Park is another evocative deconstruction of the anomie eating at the heart of America’s doomed youth.
He follows skater Alex (Gabe Nevins) whose disaffected boredom is aped by Van Sant’s artlessly drifting camera as it follows him on a fateful visit to Portland skate den Paranoid Park, and the violent repercussions of a single, stupid mistake.
Like Alex, Van Sant’s film is fragile, layered and innocently beautiful.
