Under the Radar: Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park - Page 3

Swan’s music is just one of several intriguing selections, along with a quintessential Van Sant inclusion of the late, great Elliot Smith (who virtually filled Good Will Hunting’s memorable soundtrack) as well as tracks from Beethoven, Frances White, Ethan Rose, and more predominantly numerous works from composer Nino Rota’s fascinating score for Federico Fellini’s experimental Juliet of the Spirits.

While in anyone else’s hands, making overwhelming use of classic Italian cinematic compositions may have been seen as pretentious, it works to tremendous effect here, helping to add to the film’s air of mystery as well as Paranoid Park’s strange melancholic sense of beauty, frustration, and compassion. Not to mention, when laid over the breathtaking cinematography by one of film’s truest modern day magicians, Christopher Doyle (who shot Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love as well as Philip Noyce’s Quiet American and Rabbit Proof Fence), it seems to form the ideal creation of yet another subtle Van Sant masterwork that emphasizes ambiguity in favor of easy answers and utilizes a near docudrama feel. Perhaps most significantly, above all, Paranoid Park remains true to not only his favorite theme but the one he excels in like no other craftsman — namely, depicting the portrait of a young man just trying to get by in the twenty-first century.

Article Author: Jen Johans

Jen is a life-long film buff frequently dubbed a "Walking Movie Encyclopedia.” While earning a degree in Film Studies, she joined AFI and IFP. A three-time national award-winning writer, Jen also runs her site Film Intuition as well as its Review …

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