![]() ![]() His recent output is certainly of a piece. ![]() What Van Sant has become is closer to David Lynch. Not that he would abandon those maverick ways (what up McCain/Palin?!), but that he would learn from them, apply them in new and invigorating ways. I envisioned him returning from the wilderness reenergized. It helps that in my imagination, Portland-where Van Sant lives and where Paranoid Park is set-is just one big artist colony. I conjured a portrait of the artist, stifled by three-act Hollywood, who finds inspiration in the permissiveness of the Pacific Northwest. I had heard that Gerry/ Elephant/ Last Days comprised a kind of trilogy-a death trilogy, at the risk of giving too much away-and I assumed that once the trilogy was complete, once he had cleansed his pallet, that Van Sant would move on to something else. There was a time when I thought that Van Sant was going to be that exceptional filmmaker whose career could be divided into distinct phases: The indie-darling who was responsible for Drugstore Cowboy (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), and To Die For (1995) flirted with Hollywood with Good Will Hunting (1997), Psycho (1998), and Finding Forrester (2000) before indulging in the riskier, less commercial fare of recent years. In fact, the only work with which you should be familiar in order to fully appreciate Paranoid Park is the work that Van Sant himself has produced over the past six years: Gerry (2002), Elephant (2003), and Last Days (2005), three movies that represent a remarkably sustained period of experimentation by a director who, arguably, is at the height of his powers. As any number of reviews reveals, both the novel and the film aspire to retell Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment for a young audience, a point that’s more confounding than it is interesting because such artificial inflatedness is wholly unnecessary: this story about a skater whose desire to fit in places him at the scene of a grisly accident (to woefully oversimplify things) is psychologically rich enough and intellectually stimulating enough in its own right that it does not need a 19th century Russian antecedent. The comparison with The Outsiders is apt, as the film version of Paranoid Park is also an adaptation of a young-adult novel, this one by Blake Nelson. To be sure, Van Sant’s world is more oneiric than the one that Francis Ford Coppola creates in his underappreciated version of Hinton’s The Outsiders, but when Van Sant begins his movie with a scene of the protagonist frolicking with a dog in the tall grass on the beach, I can’t help but think, “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home”. Not that Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park has many flaws to forgive, but let’s just say that he had me right from the S.E. Give me a quasi-poetic narration over what passes as a legitimately poetic image and I’ll forgive a film any number of flaws. It’s how I knew I loved Bergman’s Wild Strawberries not a minute in it’s why David Gordon Green’s George Washington is still my favorite movie that I’ve only seen one time it’s why I’m excited about the recently released director’s cut of Terrence Malick’s already overly long The New World. If you liked this review (or if you didn't, you can still) read my other work on a wide variety of movies, TV shows, and videogames and mark this review as helpful.I’m a sucker for voice over. It was actually pretty good, in my OPINION. It honestly wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Yet, I still found myself watching, which I guess means I am easily entertained. I could see how the movie ended almost right after it started. I can't defend this movie against the accusations of being clichéd and unoriginal, because it IS. I could see how the movie ended almost right after Going against many other reviews, I will now say that this movie was, in my own personal opinion, worth it. ![]() Going against many other reviews, I will now say that this movie was, in my own personal opinion, worth it. ![]()
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