If you had to pick one single movie to sum up the 'style' of Gus Van
Sant or let people know what Gus Van Sant is all about then "Paranoid
Park" is as good an example as any. He made it as late as 2007 but in
its mumblecore manner, it could have come from 10 or so years earlier.
Although at its heart there is a single traumatic event, (the killing of
a security guard), the film is less concerned with that and is more
another observation of the dull and largely uneventful life
of another of Van Sant's teenage boys, in this case Alex, (the
inexpressive Gabe Nevins), who happened to be involved in the man's
death but who continues to drift through his life with the same blank
expression and lack of concern. It is, in other words, archetypal Van
Sant, beautifully photographed by Christopher Doyle and Rain Li and full
of pretty boys being pretty vacant.
Isn't it time, I kept asking myself, for Van Sant to grow up. Since
nothing very much happens in the picture, (Alex takes to sex the way he
does to drinking a milkshake), I wondered what audience, if any, he had
in mind. Still, the film was quite a critical success and won several
awards so it's obvious that somebody up there likes him. It's by no
means a bad film but did we need it? Does anyone, other than Van Sant
and the jury at Cannes, really care? Or are we meant to look at this and
despair for the state of the world and of American society in
particular? If that's his intention then I think we need more than
pretty pictures and cute looking kids.
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