mixed media
Van Sant edged still further from conventional
narrative cinema and closer to visual art in Last Days (2005),
about the death of a confused, isolated rock star named
Blake (Michael Pitt) – recognisably a version, down to the
f. s c o t t f i t z g e r a l d f a m o u s l y d e c l a r e d , ‘There are no hairstyle, wardrobe and shambling demeanour, of Kurt
second acts in American lives.’ By the same token, there Cobain. Last Days was neither biography nor hagiography,
are no U-turns in American film careers – but Gus Van but a contemplation of the rhythms of a life winding down.
Sant is an exception. The retiring auteur from Portland, Its tragic dimension was startlingly leavened by the farcical
Oregon – whose new feature, Paranoid Park, is released in appearance of twin Mormon evangelists, its claim to
Britain in November – looked at the start of his career like reportage-style ‘reconstruction’ defused by a hallucinatory
a determined outsider in American cinema, establishing sequence in which the star’s spirit leaves his body. The film is
himself with Mala Noche (1985), Drugstore Cowboy (1989) best described, perhaps, as a lyric hymn in Cobain’s honour.
and My Own Private Idaho (1991) as the designated poet Premiered in Cannes this year, Van Sant’s latest film,
of America’s gay and narcotic countercultures. Then Van Paranoid Park, more than consolidates his nonmainstream
Sant was drawn towards the mainstream: Good Will Hunting approach. Set and shot in Van Sant’s hometown, the film is
(1997), which teamed Robin Williams with the tyro double based on a novel (by Blake Nelson), but the narrative seems
act of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, was the archetypal virtually a shell for containing stylistic tropes and subtle shifts
upmarket indie-style feel-good flick. Van Sant appeared to of emotional register. Alex (Gabe Nevins), a shy, solitary
have been comfortably absorbed into the system, even if young skateboarder, accidentally kills a security guard,
his almost shot-by-shot studio remake of Psycho (1998) was then does his best to run away from the fact: something
seen by many as a sort of entryist conceptual-art stunt at the that proves surprisingly easy given his affectless, seemingly
expense of Universal Pictures. centreless state of self. The killing itself emerges as less of
By 2000 and the stolid, stifling Finding Forrester – young an enigma than the fragmented identity at the centre of the
black kid buddies up with disillusioned old writer – Van Sant events.
seemed yet another ex-maverick destined, now and forever, As in Elephant, there’s a degree of quasi-documentary
to play it safe. But that was to reckon without a Damascene realism to the film: that Van Sant appears to paint a convincing
conversion: his exposure to the work of Hungarian director portrait of a generation and social group is partly due to the
Béla Tarr. A favourite of the late Susan Sontag, Tarr is a casting of nonprofessionals, recruited through MySpace.
past master of contemplative slowness, of shots that unfold, Van Sant would seem to have successfully moved into the
often in dense shadow, at the length that their internal logic territory associated with Larry Clark, but where Clark’s films
demands, as in his magisterially sombre seven-and-a-half- have often been readable as having a journalistic, even moral
hour Sátántangó (1994). Tarr’s example persuaded Van Sant intent, it is hard to see the hallucinatory jigsaw makeup of
to strike off in a new direction; or rather, to commit himself to Paranoid Park as anything other than an aesthetic weave
some of the ideas and forms to which he’d always gravitated paralleling the psychic condition of its hero, and perhaps
but which he couldn’t pursue in Hollywood. of his generation. Van Sant counterpoints two styles of
The first fruit of Van Sant’s rebirth was the little-seen cinematography – Christopher Doyle’s more formal, stylised
Gerry (2002). This hypnotically odd, wilfully uncommunicative 35mm imagery and the Super-8 footage of skateboarders
film follows two young men, both apparently called Gerry shot by Rain Kathy Li. Most unsettling, however, is the film’s
(Casey Affleck and the ever-bankable Matt Damon), who soundtrack, a permanently shifting collage of seemingly
stray from the signposted path while visiting a nature reserve unmotivated borrowings from Nino Rota, together with
and end up walking blindly for days through a strangely scraps of hip hop, classical and ambient music. Paranoid
mutable desert. It was hard not to see Gerry as an allegory Park refuses us the classical emotional and psychological
of Van Sant’s own decision to venture off-track into terra clarities, in favour of a finely knitted opacity that makes for a
incognita. perplexing and haunting immersive experience.
Courtesy Tartan Films, London
.
One of the most genuinely experimental films ever Introspective and unassertive as it is, Paranoid Park
made by a commercially established American director, feels more like a manifesto for a new screen language than
Gerry seemed a brazen act of bridge-burning, if not of career anything else in recent US cinema, David Lynch’s Inland
suicide. But Van Sant’s new vision would pay off dramatically, Empire (2006) included. Significantly, Paranoid Park is
his next film, Elephant, winning the Palme d’Or in Cannes produced by a French company, MK2, showing just how
in 2003. Featuring an ensemble of young nonprofessionals, much Van Sant, like Lynch, is now more closely aligned with
Elephant was an imaginative evocation of a Columbine-style the European art-cinema universe than with the logic of the
high school massacre. Studiedly flat in tone, even at its highly American screen. Van Sant’s loner intrepidity proves, to
, 2007, dir Gus Van Sant
choreographed climax, the film evokes an ostensibly ordinary quote another American writer, you can’t go home again.
day in a smalltown high school, with students – followed in
long, floating Steadicam takes – wandering dreamily around Paranoid Park is released in the UK on 28 December
the corridors and precincts while two young gun fanatics
Paranoid Park
quietly plan their coup. Elephant is a mesmerising – and for
all its detachment, emotionally involving – exercise in de-
dramatising the unimaginably dramatic.
105 artreview
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