Paranoid Park

Gus Van Sant's latest addition to his canon dealing with youth in crisis may well be the apogee of his career. Many elements of the director's previous work, such as the adoption of a non-professional cast and the deliberate discrepancy between sound and visual tracks are maintained here, but these rudiments converge to awesome effect in Paranoid Park. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle's signature style undoubtedly contributes a significant formal element by complimenting the director's abiding fascination with the beautiful awkwardness and poignant transience of youth; long tracking shots are interspersed with slow-motion Super 8 footage of skateboarders that put the adolescent body through a cinematic ceremony revealing a quasi-balletic quality that reminds us these are bodies fundamentally in transition. However, it is Van Sant's uncanny ability to visually map the teenage rituals invoked to deal with immense pain that remains in the viewer's mind long after seeing the film and confirms him as one of the genuine auteurs of American cinema. A scene of breakdown, rendered poetically through the use of an expressionistic soundtrack and tight close-up, is a particularly memorable moment. If this isn't teen art, I don't know what is. [Anna Rogers]