This is the latest little gem from Gus Van Sant, consistently my favorite American director. It follows a few days in the life of Alex (Gabe Nevins), suburban teenager in Portland and part of what a cop refers to as “the skateboarding community.†There is a murder mystery that forms the spine of this short (84 minute) movie, but it is neither important nor terribly interesting. As always, Van Sant wants to explore the peculiar, affectless, forms of alienation (which in this case are pretty mild) in American teenagers, and to do so while giving us a series of breathtakingly beautiful images. Van Sant clearly loves these kids, and you can’t help but empathize with them, even as they appear disembodied, almost entirely removed from the worlds of authority around them: parents, principals, police, adults in general, are out of focus and appear to have no idea what is going on inside the heads of the teenagers in their charge.
The camera is critical to helping the viewer get some inkling of what that is because the teenagers are all but non-verbal, so it is their expressions, the slouch of their bodies that conveys what they feel. No one does long tracking shots inside the cavernous hallways of suburban schools (echoes of Elephant) or malls like Van Sant. He switches to grainy 8 mm film for the skateboarders playing on city streets and then back to 35 mm for the more intimate shots of Alex or his girlfriends (the cheerleader and the punk). Van Sant also uses the technique he has used frequently (especially in Last Days) of showing the scenes out of sequence to tell the story, but here it is less compelling because the story is not itself that important. Best of all there is a mesmerizing scene of Alex in the shower, crying. The music fades, the sound of the water gets louder. Birdsong begins and you notice the images of birds on the bathroom tile. The sound of water changes from that of shower water to a downpour in a tropical rainforest. Then it goes silent and you are left alone with Alex managing his grief.
I’m thinking back on Elephant and I’m not sure if it was an examination of “affectless” teens or an affectless aesthetic exercise with teens as its vehicle.
I’ve already gone on record about Elephant, but I do want to throw a bit more love towards Paranoid Park, which I saw for the second time yesterday (and though I do agree with Michael a bit; this film has affect to spare). It is a beautiful film to look at (the young man who plays Alex has this angelic, Renaissance-worthy visage; his expressions are so open and emotionally malleable you can’t help to be drawn in). And while I can’t remember the cinematographer who shot the grainy, 8mm skateboard footage, the great Christopher Doyle shot the rest of the film, and his work is truly incandescent. I’m also astounded by the way Van Sant uses non-diegetic soundscapes to track the inner worlds of his characters (Chris’s description of the shower scene, which is about as far away from a prurient moment as one could possibly imagine from a Van Sant picture, is spot on). There is also an interesting appropriation of European film soundtracks as well as some mellow and seductive French techno at work in various sequences. The film’s structure is quite complex which does work, up to a point, to counter the simplicity of the narrative (which appropriates plot-points from S.E. Hinton’s young-adult novel The Outsiders). I also like the way the film teases out some of the complexities of class that plays out among these young people, their neighborhoods, school hallways, and the skatepark. Finally, hats off to non-professional Emma Nevins who plays the indie girl Paisley to whom Alex confides some incipient fears. She provides the film with it most potent moment of emotional authenticity with an offer of simple unabashed friendship. The naked simplicity of the gesture coupled with the look on Alex’s face (not to mention the way the moment is edited) brought tears to my eyes.
sunhee and i saw this in l.a when it came out. i’d meant to post about it then, but by the time we got back to an internet connection i’d run out of steam. we both loved it. it’s one of the most beautiful looking films i’ve ever seen, and yes, i too was struck by the brilliant use of sound. i remember thinking, “this is cinema; not just a novel on screen”. i should watch it again.
i liked elephant a lot too. i suspect michael’s comment is meant as a putdown, but i found that lack of affect in the style both appropriate and effective.
I largely agree with all of you… I was missing some of the emotional heft that I felt in Elephant, Gerry, and even to some extent Last Days.
Likewise, the cinematography didn’t bowl me over the way those movies did. I realize I might just be plain wrong on this point. I didn’t see it in a theater, and that might have helped. I realize it was shot by Christopher Doyle, who has made plenty of stunning movies. But his usual cameraman Harris Savides shot the others (and Milk) to say nothing of his non-VanSant movies (Birth and Zodiac <a href=”http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0767647/”among them.) I don’t think this movie reaches the heights of those for camerawork.
I don’t know why I’m harping on this. I liked Paranoid Park quite a lot. Great choice of music and it’s put to excellent use. The scene where Alex breaks up with his girlfriend and we don’t hear a word of it was clever and effective.
I notice it was shot in TV screen aspect ratio, which seems unusual, and I wonder why. There were some nice two-person shots where the camera moved in slowly until both bodies were almost entirely out of the scene, and all that was left was some hands and a table. I liked that, but I’m curious of the reason behind it.
mark, i’m inclined to say that you need to see it on a big screen to appreciate how beautiful the cinematography is. it’s a far more visually arresting film than elephant, in my opinion.
Elephant, Last Days, and Paranoid Park are all shot utilizing a 1.37 : 1 aspect ratio. Gerry for some reason, is shot in 2.35 : 1. His mainstream films are mostly shot in 1.85 : 1.
Elephant was originally produced for HBO Films. Maybe the aspect ratio was shot with television in mind and then it was decided to release the film in cinemas (and, therefore, one could argue Van Sant and Savides were intrigued by the compositional potential when using the 1.37 : 1 aspect ratio).
A day or so ago while visiting family I caught a good chunk of The Shining on one on their many cable channels, which makes amazing use of the narrow aspect ratio. I guess in theaters they letterboxed the top and bottom to make it de facto widescreen, though on DVD (and TV) you’re actually seeing more of the original frame.
There seems to be some heated discussion about this on the net, so if anyone knows the truth, lemme know.
Anyway, The Shining never fails to impress me in its shots, direction, set design and so on, and since its in the same box as Paranoid Park I wanted to give it another little shout here.
The entire negative of The Shining was exposed, meaning that there was no in-camera hard matting so the film was effectively shot in Academy 1.37 : 1, but it is unclear if it was intended to be shown in cinemas that way (some argue the film was intended to be shown “European-style” at 1.66 : 1). There is chatter that American theatres simply cropped the film to play in 1.85 : 1. Over at DVDBeaver (which does an excellent job of comparing dvd versions of films), there are three dvd versions which conform to the full-frame edition (this was ok’ed by the Kubrick estate), but the most recent dvd release crops the film at 1.78 : 1. Go figure.
re: Elephant . After 10 years of silence, the mother of Dylan Klebold has written an exclusive essay for Oprah’s magazine. It is perfectly suited to the style of Oprah: a breathless confession that reveals absolutely nothing and concludes with a vapid call for self-help.