Gus Van Sant is one of the more interesting writer/directors around working in film today. He’s able to go mainstream with hits like Good Will Hunting and then do more personal and artsy indie films like Gerry and Elephant. He’s in a real experimental phase lately and Paranoid Park is another aimless wander from Van Sant. An artsy, pretentious void of nothingness. There’s no emotional resonance, character development (or story) at all in Paranoid Park. Van Sant’s pretty images and stylish cinematography are even spiraling into cliche. There’s endless shots of a teen brooding in a hoodie walking along a grassy field and grainy (and quite frequent and annoying) skateboarding footage (an endless amount) set to bizarre ambient noise. A lot of Van Sant’s similar artistic touches worked in Elephant, but they fall flat here. Elephant had a sense of doom and a powerful conclusion that this film just cant touch. Paranoid Park simply ends in an aimless fog, almost the exact same way it began.

Paranoid Park is about an unsolved murder at a skate park. Detectives come to the local high school to question skaters including a kid named Alex (a comatose newcomer named Gabe Nevins) whose story frames the entire film. There’s an accident near the tracks late one night and Alex has to decide what to do about his involvement in the man’s death. The story is barely coherent and the film (though a scant 80 minutes) is slow and boring. The viewer could easily nod off it becomes so tedious. The DVD isn’t much help either. It has no special features whatsoever. A bare-bones disc to a film that was hardly worth watching in the first place. A commentary from Gus Van Sant and some behind the scenes footage would have helped explain Van Sant’s vision a bit more clearly.

Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park will disappoint all but his most hardcore fans. It’s slow and quite dull. The cast tries valiantly and the film is quite sincere about wanting to explore the teenage experience, but the film has no forward momentum and too little coherence going for it. The cinematography from Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love) is quite beautiful and some of his cool images are the saving grace of this noble, but deadly failure.

DVD Grade: C-

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