I feel conflicted about these skater kids

Paranoid Park

Mostly I think this is because we basically don’t have a skater culture in Europe. Sure there were a few kids who dressed up like that, but unlike the Paranoid Park kids in the film our “skaters” were just pretending (it’s a little bit like Glen in Mad Men who dresses up a little counterculture but is actually just a normal prep school kid). In that respect all I know about the skater culture is from television and popular music, and that is indeed a conflicted one. I feel conflicted to almost anything related to music. I’m thinking Blink 182 and Sum 41 here (what’s up with these Word + Number band names?) and even though I did not particularly like them that much, they are close enough to what I did like – a glimpse of American culture I have only learned about from afar and clearly have a distorted view of.

But skater culture aside, “Paranoid Park” is an almost Crime-and-Punishment-like depiction of a boy’s inner feelings after he killed somebody. He has a tough time dealing with it, and the film is basically just that. Like almost every other artsy Gus van Sant film, virtually nothing happens and it focuses very much on a specific feeling which is supposed to be transmitted to the audience. In my case, it totally worked. Maybe I am just irrationally attracted to the boy who strangely reminds me of Sally Draper, maybe I just have a weak spot for teenagers with nowhere to go in life. I have never been a teenager without purpose but aforementioned conflicted pop culture certainly made me sympathetic towards this type of people. I recently met a kid who was basically just like that – longish hair, extremely weak handshake and disinterest in his eyes. That particular example probably has some deeper disciplinary issues (any tigered Chinese kid would certainly look you in the eye when greeting you), but his general disinterest in things struck me. Maybe he was feeling your usual teenage detachment from the world, but if that is the case, I wonder if there is something one can actually do about it.

In a very strange way, despite the stylized camera shots and slow-paced story advancement, I though that “Paranoid Park” was very realistic. It seems that I liked it more than most people and that is probably because I see another whole level underneath it, a rather personal one. Nevertheless, it really is a beautifully shot movie!

Ze hail of bullets:

• I love Taylor Momsen’s (Jenny in Gossip Girl!) role in the film. She is absolutely perfect as the cheerleading bitch girlfriend who, by the way, acts exactly the same way as almost all the girls did at the time. Me included.

• This article describes the protagonist as a heartthrob. I am not crazy, he actually is kind of cute! But really, I am glad to see that he’s the real deal – a kid from the streets.

• I’m telling you, the slightly longish emo hair is either fabulous or absolutely atrocious – depending on who wears it and how it falls. We all noticed that, for some reason, the protagonist looks better towards the end of the film.

• A propos the end – I think the film only makes sense if the boy ends up never getting caught, and will live with this combination of guilt and detachment for the rest of his life. What do you think?