Paranoid Park, Gus Van Sant’s adaptation of a youth novel by Blake Nelson, is at its heart a mystery.  A teenaged skater, played by amateur Gabe Nevins, drifts towards the toughest skating park in town, Paranoid Park.  He meets an older skater who takes him to hop a freight train (the movie is set in Portland; train hopping always seems particularly Northwestern).  There, a murder occurs, and much of the movie is spent working out what happened and how Nevins is going to cope with the consequences.

The film has numerous sequences of skaters in public places, much of it shot in Super 8.  The rest of the film is shot 35 mm and the contrast is stunning and engaging.  The film explores the nature of teenaged life, with its inherent randomness, uncertainty, and frankness, as well as any I can remember.  There are important homosexual overtones throughout the film and Van Sant allows the camera to lovingly follow Nevins as if in tribute to his youth.  In the film, Nevins also has sex with his girlfriend (Taylor Momsen), but the film leaves no doubt that the rail yard experience is more important in shaping his character and his future.  It stands as one of Van Sant’s stronger films and, along with the superior Elephant, argues for him as one of the key interpreters of modern American teenage life.  ✰ ✰ ✰ ½.

MJM  12-18-2011