“Drag Me to Hell”: From beneath you it devours

Dir. Sam Raimi
(2009, PG-13, 99 min)
★ ★ ★

What I like about pulp genre specialists like Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez is how true they are to their roots. When they make B-movies, they do it with A-grade skill, but instead of holding themselves above their references with detached superiority, they embrace them fully and give in to all the giddy, gaudy, ridiculous pleasures that, I imagine, made them fall in love with the movies in the first place. In films such as Tarantino’s Kill Bill, Rodriguez’s Sin City, and the Grindhouse double feature they released together, they evoke for my generation an era of drive-thru and midnight movies that no longer exists.

Sam Raimi, by reputation, can be added to the list, though I am sad to say I have not seen the Evil Dead films that won him such a rabid cult following. I think, however, that Drag Me to Hell gives me some idea. I don’t think it’s as good as Kill Bill, Sin City, or the Grindhouse films, but it’s certainly giddy, gaudy, and ridiculous … I kinda liked it.

It’s ostensibly a horror movie, but it plays like a comedy. Raimi takes gruesome imagery past the point of terror to a place of abject silliness, in the hopes of achieving a sublime absurdity, and a lot of it works. It stars Alison Lohman, the actress from White Oleander and Matchstick Men who deserves to be a bigger star than she is, as a bank loan officer named Christine Brown, who spends a lot of time being knocked around, crawling through mud, and periodically losing chunks of her hair to angry gypsy spirits. There’s a bit with an anvil too, but see it for yourself.

You see, Christine is up for a promotion at work and wants to prove herself by playing hardball with an old woman about to lose her home; the bank will make money if it seizes the house. But this is the wrong old woman to mess with. She’s a wheezing old gypsy with a one good eye and an apparent mucus problem. Humiliated, she puts a curse on Christine: for three days, she will be tormented by a demonic creature called Lamia, and then she will be, as per the title, dragged to hell.

She has a loving but incredulous boyfriend, psychologist Clay Dalton (Justin Long), who pooh-poohs all the spiritual mumbo-jumbo but is less condescending than most such characters in the movies. There’s a wide-eyed psychic, Rham Jas (Dileep Rao), an exposition repository who makes dire proclamations about the curse. Adriana Barraza (Oscar nominee for Babel) has a fun, scenery-chewing cameo as a mystic who holds a seance.

I was entertained by Raimi’s audacity. He is so broadly, joyfully over-the-top that his film is old-fashioned in an endearing kind of way. Drag Me to Hell is an unpretentious, irony-free freak show that revels in the ingenuity of its creep-out effects (eyeballs! blood! staples!) so much that even though I wasn’t particularly scared by the film, I was happy to go along for the gonzo ride.

“Sin Nombre”: Coming to America

Dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga
(2009, R, 96 min)
★ ★ ★

There’s a good documentary in here. As it is it’s a good fiction film, but a documentary would be more edifying. The issue here is illegal immigration, and watching the details of a family’s journey from Honduras to the Texas border in Sin Nombre — intercut with a melodrama about a Mexican gang, but more on that later — I was struck that the American discussion of illegal immigration is the wrong one. There’s been talk of building a wall, deporting illegals, giving them amnesty, denying them health care benefits (we know where Congressman Joe Wilson stands). Now it seems to me that this manner of discussion amounts to closing the barn door after the horses are out. Watching the film I thought, the problem of immigration isn’t at the border, it’s between them. What is it about American, Mexican, and Central American society that makes this harrowing, Herculean, and illegal journey the path of least resistance for those who wish to emigrate? What are our problems as nations that necessitate such journeys for the poor?

I’m going off-topic here. The film isn’t a political tract and shouldn’t be, though I wish it had spent more time on the details of immigration than on its more conventional gang saga. But the arduous journey is taken as such a matter of course — and the DVD commentary by writer-director Cary Joji Fukunaga indicates knowledge from firsthand research to support his film’s authenticity — that I have to wonder how it got that way.

The film opens in Southern Mexico with Casper (Édgar Flores), a teenage gang member who takes under his wing a child, Smiley (Kristian Ferrer), who wants to join up. Elsewhere, in Honduras, young Sayra (Paulina Gaitán) prepares to travel north with her father, who was recently deported from the United States, where he has a second family. (What has become of Sayra’s mother was unclear to me in her expository early scenes; she has likely passed away.)

Casper and Sayra will cross paths on the train that will bring her from Southern Mexico to Texas, after tragic events cause a rift between Casper and his gang. They form an unlikely bond, as the story goes. From this point forward, the narrative holds few surprises, though it is effective, thanks in large part to the natural performances of Flores and Gaitán.

The best scenes show the details of the migrants’ passage: the treacherous riding atop freight-train cars; the group of passers-by who throw food to the travelers, followed by a group that throws rocks; the dodging of border patrols; the crossing of rivers. When one character is caught by the authorities and returned to Honduras, we see him setting out again, unabated. And so it goes. If at first you don’t succeed …

“The Hurt Locker”: Tick, tick, boom

Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
(2009, R, 131 min)
★ ★ ★

I expected more.

Scoring a staggering 93 on MetaCritic and 97% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes, The Hurt Locker has been called the first great film to be made about the current Iraq War. Watching it I thought about another great film about the Iraq War, HBO’s Generation Kill, and how it’s better than The Hurt Locker — clearer, more unified, more complete. The HBO film has the benefit of greater length; it’s a seven-hour miniseries. But then there’s another great film, Taking Chance, also from HBO, which is also better than The Hurt Locker and only 77 minutes. But its focus is different, concerning military rituals of death, and a direct comparison would be unfair.

The Hurt Locker is a good film, but given its praise there’s a feeling that, yes, it should be a better one. Its characters are at times murky, or overly familiar. Several scenes are thrilling individually, but feel fragmented from each other; they don’t build urgency from one to the next.

The story follows three Army soldiers in an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit: Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), Sergeant JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), and Specialist Owen Eldredge (Brian Geraghty). Team leader James is a danger junkie who cavalierly risks his safety and the safety of his unit; we’ve seen his ilk before in war films. Sanborn is weary, eager to return home at the end of his rotation, and afraid that James will get him killed before he gets there. Eldredge is riddled with guilt over the death of James’s predecessor; he meets periodically with a colonel who counsels him (Christian Camargo). The colonel is a desk jockey who hasn’t seen combat for quite a while; the payoff of this subplot announces itself well before it should.

The film works less as psychology than as a series of vignettes chronicling life on the front lines. The opening scene of a bomb disposal generates subtle dread. Later, the soldiers come under sniper fire, and director Kathryn Bigelow emphasizes the way time hangs, allowing room for the mundane details: cleaning blood off of bullets, grabbing juice pouches while the enemy lays low. The film’s best shot shows James following a single wire until he reaches a junction of wires hidden in the dirt; we feel the sudden terror — in the quiet of the desert, a web of death all around.

On DVD: “The Duchess”

Dir. Saul Dibb
(PG-13) ★ ★ ★

The Duchess features lavish costumes by Michael O’Connor, extravagant production design by Michael Carlin, and a handsome score by Rachel Portman. The screenplay — by Jeffrey Hatcher, Anders Thomas Jensen, and director Saul Dibb — is less ambitious. It presents British history with a dash of romance-novel feminism in the same vein as The Other Boleyn Girl. In this case, it’s the story of Georgiana (Keira Knightley), the Duchess of Devonshire, who is trapped in a loveless marriage and decides, “If my husband can take a lover, why can’t I?”

Her husband, the Duke of Devonshire (Ralph Fiennes), is appropriately loathsome. He rapes Georgiana, beds her best friend, shows her no affection, and disapproves of any child she bears that isn’t a male heir. There are shadings of shy insecurity in Fiennes’s performance that at all times threaten to add dimension to the underwritten role, but he sticks mostly to his prescribed role as villain. Her lover, Charles Grey (Dominic Cooper), is appropriately virile. He also does what his role demands: flirts with his bedroom eyes, demonstrates sensitivity in Georgiana’s time of need, bounds into her mansion in a grand romantic gesture to sweep her away. The film opens with a physical contest to prove his manliness; no word on whether the comparison to a horse is apt.

I kid, I kid. True, the film favors its less interesting subject: under the romance is a fascinating study of Georgiana as a proto-celebrity that should be the focus rather than the background; with her extravagant fashion and popularity to the tabloids, she is the Paris Hilton of her day. But Knightley and director Dibb achieve a dignity that elevates the material above crass melodrama. As I write it, this review seems more derisive than I intended it to be. So be it. I wouldn’t say I’m exactly a sucker for this kind of film, but it worked for me. I liked The Other Boleyn Girl too.

“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”

Dir. David Fincher
(PG-13) ★ ★ ★

They say youth is wasted on the young. Not so for Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt), who is born with one foot already in the grave, showing the symptoms of a man dying of old age. But he doesn’t die — he ages in reverse, his body developing into that of a younger and younger man while those around him grow older and older. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, adapted from a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a curious case indeed. It’s a beautiful film, with some of the most exquisitely integrated digital and makeup effects of the year, and the production design by Donald Graham Burt and cinematography by Claudio Miranda give it a glow that evokes fantasy and memory. But in the final analysis, what is it about?

Over the course of its 166 minutes, Curious Case develops a lot of good ideas but fails to organize them into a cogent theme; it’s a fable that isn’t sure what it wants to teach us, only that it wants to teach us … something. The result is a lot of diffuse life lessons, each of them touching when taken on their own, but they fail to bring the complete picture into clear focus.

Very early in his life — or is it late in his life? — Benjamin learns to make his peace with death. His birth father, stricken with panic over his son’s deformities, leaves him on the doorstep of Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who runs a home for the elderly. Alike in infirmity, Benjamin identifies with the aged tenants and watches fondly as they come and go, but he does not view death with despair. He comes to see it as a visitor, who comes along as a sad, but natural and inevitable part of life. Says one of the residents he befriends, “We’re meant to lose the people we love. How else are we supposed to know how important they are?”

When he turns seventeen, he sets out to come of age — such as it is for a man aging backwards. He works on a tugboat captained by Mike (Jared Harris), an eccentric who has extensively tattooed his own body. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, the tugboat is commissioned by the US Navy, and in battle Benjamin encounters yet more death. At a port of call in Russia, he encounters an older — or is it younger? — woman, Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton, mysterious and poignant). In one of my favorite interludes of the film, Benjamin and Elizabeth grow intimate, and he learns about the dreams that have passed her by.

Benjamin’s true love is Daisy (played as an adult by Cate Blanchett). They reunite throughout their lives, crossing each other along their opposite paths of aging. Daisy tells their story from her deathbed in modern-day New Orleans; her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) rummages through artifacts of her past and reads to her passages from Benjamin’s diary.

Benjamin recorded the important lessons of his life: “I was thinking how nothing lasts, and how sad it is.” “Your life is defined by its opportunities, even the ones you miss.” “It’s never too late … to be whoever you want to be.” “You can curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.” On the page they read like the interiors of Hallmark cards, or fortune cookies. In the film, however, bolstered by a dreamy style that earns such sentimentality, they work.

The problem lies not with the sentiments themselves, but with the film’s central assumption, that Benjamin Button possesses special wisdom as the result of his condition. Not so. Though he regresses physically, he develops emotionally and psychologically much the same way the rest of us do. What insights can we gain from him that we cannot gain from anyone else? Benjamin cannot tell us anything new about aging because, as he says, he’s always looking out his own eyes, and those eyes are always looking forward.

But let’s take a step back. Though Benjamin himself cannot teach us lessons about life, that he ages in reverse allows director David Fincher (Zodiac) and screenwriter Eric Roth (Munich) to bring our attention to their subject: the passage of time — how it gives and takes away, how it can be a companion or a nemesis, how we let things slip from our grasp or hold them tight, and how our lives intertwine, imperceptibly but irrevocably. There is an impressive sequence where Benjamin details the minute circumstances that led a group of characters into a life-changing car accident. How he knows the details isn’t important — this is not a film where we are concerned with realism. What matters is how we affect each other throughout our lives.

Yet when we arrive at the end, we notice Roth grasping at straws. The narrated montage that closes the film — I will not reveal specifics — feels like he’s still searching for his meaning, and Fincher tries to imbue the words with a profundity that isn’t there. We’re left with scattered notions and noble sentiments floating in a sweeping narrative with nothing to unite them.

Still, I am struck by Benjamin himself, whose condition, I think, is ideally suited to the human learning curve: he endures feebleness during childhood and takes his lumps along the way, and when he’s learned his lessons has the vigor to live as fully as his heart desires. If youth is wasted on the young, none of us should be young until we are old enough to make the most of it.

On DVD: “In Bruges”

Dir. Martin McDonagh
(R) ★ ★ ★

In Bruges contains scenes that are utterly perfect in their writing, acting, and directing, and others that don’t work at all. It’s a black comedy that works when it’s black but not so much when it’s trying to be a comedy. Self-conscious, ersatz-Tarantino dialogue is a burden to scenes like the one where picking up a murder weapon turns into a conversation about the proper use of the word “alcoves.” Racial jokes abound, perhaps to underline that this is not a film about nice people, but there’s a relish to it that is off-putting, as if writer-director Martin McDonagh is enjoying himself too much.

But then there’s a scene like the phone call between Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and his boss Harry (Ralph Fiennes), shown in a single take, where we sense that at the end of the conversation will be something dire, and we’re right. And a scene in the clock tower between Ken and Harry about morality and what they mean to each other. And several scenes between Ken and his partner Ray (Colin Farrell) about a crime Ray has committed that he cannot cope with. And a beautiful finale that repeats a judgment day motif through a foggy, dreamlike film set. Scenes like these are extraordinary, considering the ethical codes of career killers, their hope and hopelessness, and it all comes down to a moral choice about the best way to right a wrong.

And there’s a performance like Gleeson’s, which is one of the best of the year. His paternal warmth mixed with hardened pragmatism keeps the balance between the story’s darkness (Harry) and its wounded innocence (Ray). His conflict is the heart of the film, and his decisions point to an alternative to violence and cynicism. I can’t give a film with a character and performance like this a negative review. About half of In Bruges warrants four-stars. The other half deserves little more than two. I’ll split the difference.

On DVD: “The X-Files: I Want to Believe”

Dir. Chris Carter
(PG-13) ★ ★ ★

Ten years after the first big-screen adaptation of the cult hit FOX series and a full six years after the series ended, this summer’s follow-up The X-Files: I Want to Believe came later than most fans had hoped for — perhaps too late. Upon its release in July, it was greeted with a shrug from audiences and derision from critics, scoring a mere 32% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 47 on MetaCritic. It deserves better.

It is neither a great film nor a great addition to the X-Files canon, but it is effective, well acted, and contains richer themes than one can expect from most Hollywood films. Show me another mainstream thriller that unleashes its monsters to pose questions of redemption and faith.

The story reunites Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), no longer with the FBI but asked by the bureau to consult on an investigation into the disappearance of an agent. They formerly specialized in cases involving the paranormal and are needed to evaluate the credibility of a man who claims to have a psychic connection to the case.

The psychic is Father Joseph Crissman (Billy Connolly), who claims the visions are a gift from God, an opportunity for him to repent for his sins — he is a convicted pedophile. Scully, a Catholic and a medical doctor, doesn’t believe him, but something he tells her hits close to home and she is not sure what to believe.

A subplot involves Scully’s treatment of a young boy with an untreatable neurological disease. This storyline has no connection to the film’s central mystery and is a bit of a narrative sore thumb, jutting in awkwardly. Its purpose is to further the film’s theme: Scully develops a painful, experimental treatment for her patient that is opposed by her colleagues and the hospital’s administrative priests — “I have taken it up with the highest authority,” Father Ybarra (Adam Godley) warns her, “as should you.” But she believes that a message from God has told her to risk the procedure to save the child: a cryptic message from the pedophile priest.

Would God choose to speak through such a disreputable man? Has He spoken to her as she believes He has? Chris Carter’s direction and screenplay (co-written by Frank Spotnitz) lean towards overwrought sentimentality, but Anderson’s performance makes the hospital story work; she gives it the necessary weight and conviction.

Mulder has a different kind of faith: He believes in the paranormal, in the existence of extraterrestrials. Scully is empirical, a scientist, and believes what she can see, but in her religious faith she has more in common with her partner than she perhaps realizes. Though they argue about the truth, they both believe that it’s out there.

The story shapes up as a grisly case of surgical experimentation — I won’t go into the details. It’s the kind of ghoulish plot you’d find in an about-average episode of the X-Files series, though by divorcing itself from the unwieldy alien mythology that devoured the program over its nine seasons on the air the film gets the chance to breathe, to focus on its characters and themes. It gives us an interesting supporting cast, including Connolly as the disgraced priest and Amanda Peet as an open-minded FBI agent, though I could have done without Agent Mosley Drummy, who as played by rapper Alvin “Xzibit” Joiner does little more than scowl.

The film was more successful in foreign markets than in domestic ones, and its worldwide box office gross of $68 million more than doubles its modest production budget. In addition, I suspect many fans of the series who passed on the film in theaters will come to it on DVD, as I did, giving perhaps some meager hope that a third X-Files film isn’t out of the question. Unlikely, but I want to believe.

Note: The X-Files: I Want to Believe is rated PG-13. It includes multiple decapitations, an impalement, assaults, murders, kidnappings, and disturbing, graphic depictions of forced surgery. Frost/Nixon is rated R. According to the website Kids-In-Mind.com, it includes a grand total of five F-words. The MPAA thinks the X-Files movie is more suitable for young teenagers. Let your sanity guide you; the MPAA’s has gone astray.

“Happy-Go-Lucky”

Dir. Mike Leigh
(R) ★ ★ ★

Poppy is so upbeat even her name sounds like a celebration — or like an opiate, if you will, and that comparison might be just as apt, depending on your perspective. She’s unflappably chipper, and you, like I, might be waiting for the other shoe to drop: some tragic twist that would reveal that her relentless positivity is a facade, or a symptom of a greater problem. Perhaps that says more about me than it does about her. Perhaps the viewer is his own litmus test; he learns who he is by whether he wants to hug her or have her committed.

Poppy is the subject of writer-director Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, and I love her. As played in an infectious performance by Sally Hawkins, she is a force of nature, joyous. Her outlook isn’t naive; she sees the world with clear eyes and accepts it lovingly. I want to be like her, and spending two hours with her is a pleasure. However, as the end credits rolled, I wondered why I had spent two hours with her. Leigh tells her story without a clear point of view. His film observes her, along with others in her life who represent a broad palette of temperaments, but it does not express an opinion of her. What does her story mean to Leigh? What should it mean to us? He shows, but he does not reveal.

Poppy is a schoolteacher and a good one. Her exuberance helps her relate to her young students, but she is a responsible educator and addresses problems with maturity. In her off hours, she is unleashed. The first scenes show her trying to cozy up to a bewildered bookstore clerk and then partying with friends. When her bicycle is stolen, she observes, unperturbed, “I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye.”

The idea of the film seems to lie with the various personalities of her friends and family how they contrast. She has two younger sisters. One is married and with child; she regards life with strict seriousness and warns Poppy not to be so cavalier. The other is pouty and petulant and lashes out. There is a flamenco instructor who is prone to emotional outbursts. And a student who is angry and violent as the result of problems at home. We notice these things, but what do we do with these things we notice? It’s data in search of a hypothesis.

The film comes most fully alive during the scenes with Poppy’s driving teacher, Scott, played by Eddie Marsan in a marvelous performance that creates a great inner sadness under a thick exterior of cantankerousness. Scott is Poppy’s direct opposite — dark as Poppy is bright, mistrusting as Poppy is open-hearted. She seems impervious to his perpetual bad mood — to a point. They have great confrontation that supplies the climax, though the film’s lack of a cogent theme leaves the scene somewhat adrift amongst all the other scenes.

There is an interlude I don’t understand. It involves a chance encounter with a homeless man (Stanley Townsend). I call it a chance encounter because what else but chance could account for it in the screenplay? I spent much time considering this seemingly orphaned scene. What does it say about Poppy, about the world, or about the man? We see that Poppy is compassionate, but we knew that already. The homeless man rambles and is fearful of his surroundings, but it doesn’t say much about the world because he sees it through the fractured prism of mental disorder. About the man — you’d have to ask him, but I don’t know if his answer would be clearer than mine.

Leigh is famous for his use of improvisation in developing his screenplays. I recommend the film on the strength of the characters he and his actors have collaborated to create. As for the story — you may glean more from it than I.

“Slumdog Millionaire”

Dir. Danny Boyle
(R) ★ ★ ★

Slumdog Millionaire is rated R, but it’s not an R movie. To my eyes, it’s clearly a PG-13. The language is tame. The sexuality is virtually non-existent. The themes are mature, but the treatment is not exploitive. There is violence, but none of it is graphic. Part of the film takes place in an Indian call center; perhaps during this economic crisis the MPAA is now taking a hard line against depictions of outsourcing.

Playing like City of God with a dash of Quiz Show, Slumdog Millionaire follows Jamal (played as an adult by Dev Patel), a young man on the verge of winning an unprecedented fortune on India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? How has he done so well? He is penniless, uneducated, from the slums. He must be cheating, right? He is arrested and interrogated in ways that would have seemed shocking before the Bush administration. His interrogator is a police inspector played by character actor Irfan Khan, who had a breakthrough year in 2007, pulling off a hat trick of noteworthy supporting roles, in A Mighty Heart, The Darjeeling Limited, and, most impressively, The Namesake. If you don’t know his name yet, you will.

How Jamal has accumulated the knowledge to succeed on the show provides the framework for the story. The answers came from a life hard lived; he has been forced to grow up fast. Is it a tad convenient that the trivia questions are so perfectly aligned with his life experiences? Yes. Contrived? That too. I suppose we must look at this as a fairy tale of sorts, and the game show as figurative; the show itself is beside the point — what matters is that Jamal’s experiences have given him the wisdom to deliver himself into a better life.

Question by question, Jamal tells the story of his upbringing: He was born into poverty, lost his mother during a raid on his village, and with his brother Salim was exploited by a man who used children to panhandle on the streets. Through his life has been one constant: Latika, a girl he befriended, and whom he tries to rescue from further exploitation from childhood into young adulthood.

Latika is the kind of love interest who seems to exist mostly in the mind of the hero. Jamal idealizes their love, and since they spend so much of the film apart there’s little for him to do but idealize her. His devotion to her is believable, and they have touching scenes together, but we never really get to know her, and we wonder if Jamal knows her well enough to so declare her the love of his life. She never fully comes alive as a character, so their relationship works more as an idea than as a romance we can truly root for.

More effective is the relationship between Jamal and his brother Salim. As in City of God, the film it most closely resembles, Slumdog shows us how the common upbringing of two young men in the slums produced divergent lives. Salim is the older and stronger of the two brothers, but also a dark figure. He tormented Jamal as a child, but when it counted he was ruthlessly protective. He made hard decisions, some of which Jamal cannot forgive him for, but he sacrificed his innocence to save his brother’s, and that makes the trajectory of both characters especially moving.

Slumdog is written by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), based on the novel Q&A by Vikas Swarup, and directed by Danny Boyle (28 Days Later). Boyle films with a frenetic style that is reminiscent of City of God, but he lacks Fernando Meirelles’s elegance of camera and narrative. At times, we wish he’d stay still and conjure more of the gentle warmth he brought to his other fable of young boys, 2004’s Millions. Perhaps that explains the MPAA rating: They were expecting a zombie movie.

On DVD: “Paranoid Park”

Dir. Gus Van Sant
(R) ★ ★ ★

There are a lot of empty spaces in Paranoid Park. Writer-director Gus Van Sant favors slow-motion, hanging moments, and silences. He is less concerned with plot than with delving into the internal life of his main character, Alex (Gabe Nevins, one of the film’s many debut actors). The film is told from Alex’s point of view, but few films are as effective at expressing a character’s psyche from the inside out.

Alex tells his own story. He is a teenager with a passion for skateboarding, though by his own admission he is not very good, certainly not as good as the tougher, hard-living kids who frequent the East Side Skate Park, known as Paranoid Park to those who go there. One night, he accidentally kills a security guard. As he tells the story, he dances around this event, not to bury the lead but out of fear of reliving the trauma. The film doubles back, jumps ahead, repeats scenes. It’s an unfocused narrative, but it’s a focused lack of focus. It unfolds as a confused teenager might tell it, and Van Sant stays true to Alex’s voice.

There are great scenes along the way in which Van Sant gets to the heart of Alex’s crisis. An early scene, which takes place after the event, features Alex being informally interviewed by Detective Richard Lu (Daniel Liu). In a long, unbroken shot, the camera very slowly pushes in on Alex as he answers questions. We don’t know how much the detective knows, and Alex’s demeanor is steady, but the push-in expresses his mounting anxiety, his feeling of being closed in upon.

A later scene is of Alex taking a shower immediately after the accident. In a few static shots in extreme closeup, we see his head downcast, and then sinking out of the frame. Dissonant tones on the soundtrack and the rushing water combine to express Alex’s psychological and emotional distress. These few wordless shots speak volumes about Alex’s fear and guilt.

There is a perceptiveness about the film. Alex’s parents are in the midst of a divorce, and their combined handful of brief scenes give us a sense of the family relationships: the father, a tattoo-covered bad-boy in appearance, expresses guilt and affection for his son, and the mother, who feebly inquires about her son’s activities, seems concerned but disconnected. In a film told so fully from Alex’s point of view, the minimal presence of his parents is itself telling; though well meaning, their separation has caused them both to withdraw from their son’s life.

However, Van Sant’s style can be as much a liability as an asset. A listlessness sets in. At times the deliberateness of the film’s pace turns into sluggishness. There are long slow-motion sequences of skateboarding, dreamy in their effect, but excessive in their duration. They seem to represent a kind of respite for Alex away from the reality of his circumstances, but they linger, and the mind wanders restlessly.

We don’t expect a tidy resolution to come from this material, but we hope for a more satisfying one than Paranoid Park offers; the open ending is so open, it’s barely an ending. I reacted to it with a shrug and wondered where Van Sant had hoped to take me, and where he thought he had arrived.