Paranoid Park

Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Liu, Taylor Momsen, Jake Miller
Running time: 90 minutes

Plot: Alex (Nevins) is a teen who likes skatboarding but isn’t very good at it — he’s not ready for Paranoid Park, a skate park built illegally by local street kids. Haunted by the guilt of his unintentional involvement in a man’s death, Alex decides to write a letter of confession.

I imagine this will be a polarizing film. I don’t just mean because it’s Gus Van Sant: if you don’t like voyeuristic takes of beautiful, unknown teenagers, long, pointless shots of people walking, driving, or sitting, and plenty of slo-mo, why did you pay for the ticket? Rather, seeing the reaction the film got at Cannes (it won the 60th Anniversary Prize), it’s obvious that some people will love the performances and the audiovisual aesthetic; others will find the whole thing unconvincing, pretentious, and disjointed.

For mine, this film revisits too much of Elephant’s ground, without doing it quite so well. Once more, we’re in a high school in Portland. Again, grisly death lies at the heart of the drama. This time, though, we’re focused almost exclusively on one teen, Alex, and one accidental death.

What made Elephant work was the ad-libbed, strangely-naturalistic-yet-dreamy portrayal of the commonplace school day, juxtaposed with the horror of a shooting spree. The impact comes from the very ordinariness of the school interrupted by a terrifying, monstrous act. On some level, it taps into the fears of everyone.

In Paranoid Park, I found I couldn’t really share Alex’s pain: despite the awful outcome of his actions (I won’t spoil it), we can see that there was nothing malicious in him, and it really could have happened to anyone. It’s hard to feel sorry for him when he could easily ’fess up. Maybe we need to understand better what he thinks the consequences would be.

And it is perhaps this that makes Alex a little unbelievable: he won’t crack under pressure from the police, and yet he consistently lacks nerve in other settings. Although some have praised Nevins’ verisimilitude, I found his wavering narrative and quavering voice fairly annoying and unconvincing. The less said about Momsen's self-conscious performance, the better.

Meanwhile, the plot seems unnecessarily splintered, and, rather than build character or atmosphere, many of GVS’s trademark lengthy shots just seem here to be scrabbling for an excuse to round out an eclectic but unsatisfying soundtrack. Further, I found the original score wearing and overweening.

It all adds up to a very long 90 minutes.

Verdict: Only for GVS fans. In the meantime, if you need a fix of him in this mode, you’d be better off rewatching Gerry, Elephant, or even Last Days.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Director: Andrew Dominik
Cast: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Rockwell
Running time: 160 minutes

Plot: Jesse James (Pitt) has mostly retired from his outlaw ways, with the members of his gang either dead, in gaol, or alienated by his increasing paranoia and unpredictability. Robert Ford (Affleck), obsessed with James from his youth, manages to inveigle his way into the gang and his hero’s confidence. Later, having been arrested for the murder of Wood Hite, Ford negotiates a Governor’s pardon in return for killing James.

A Western with a high-profile star and a green director, filmed in 2005 and originally slated for release in 2006, Jesse James was showing good form early for this year’s Razzies. You might well have assumed that Australian Andrew "Chopper" Dominik had bitten off more than he could chew on his second directorial outing. Imagine my surprise, then, to find that this film is almost perfect.

Based on Ron Hansen’s 1983 novel, the film poetically, almost languorously, charts the intersection of the lives of Jesse James and Robert Ford, from the Blue Cut train robbery until their deaths. The knowledge that Ford must eventually kill James brings an acute tension to the film: we hang on the characterization (why did Ford betray James?), and we wonder just when it’s going to happen. This lends special moment to every scene with the leads.

And what performances the leads give! Brad Pitt does his finest work since 12 Monkeys: his James is believably conflicted, a naturally generous man whose largesse is swamped by a growing, terrifying paranoia. All this is conveyed with merciful and uncharacteristic understatement. Casey Affleck is on unprecedented form. He spent two and a half hours of making me hate his whining, shifty, greasy Judas, before, in the dénouement, managing not only to pick up dream-boat Zooey Deschanel, but even to have me pity him.

Meanwhile, the supporting cast is also excellent. Sam Rockwell is brilliant and painfully pathetic as Charley, Robert Ford’s older brother. Sam Shepard (Frank James), Paul Schneider (Dick Liddil) and Garret Dillahunt (Ed Miller) make their gang members very memorable with relatively little screen-time. They deliver the eccentric dialogue in an engaging, natural way.

All of this is played out in a visually spectacular world. Seeing the film with essentially no prior knowledge, I was surprised by the steely, cold beauty of the landscapes (Roger Deakins is DoP), which evokes the dream-like mythic atmosphere required for any James pic — even if here the myth is freshly reimagined and recast. Curiously, some shots (and particularly some action scenes) recalled Gladiator, and I wasn’t surprised to see that Ridley Scott had a Producer credit.

Moreover, the exquisite visuals are matched by the soundscape: this is possibly the best film score I’ve heard this year. iTunes here I come!

Verdict: A grand and beautifully shot account of the ignominious end of the West’s best-loved villain. Loses a star for unnecessarily rambling in Wood Hite’s story, but certainly one to watch, even if you don’t like Westerns.