Gus Van Sant's films are light, translucent, not just because of the blond boy he loves; the camera seems to move with the wind, which is his business. It can be understood as an old gay full of literary and artistic accents. Of course, "literary and art" has a very bad reputation now, but on the surface, those scenes that have nowhere to go and are like floating petals are indeed very " Literature and art”, it is easy to attract criticism.
Fortunately, he is an independent director, and we can feel at ease by pointing fingers at him as a whole, so we can go back and look at his previous things, this kind of lightness with a downward force (very contradictory, but a few sub-real), seems to become visible. Of course, including narrative, "Juno" also talks about youth, but that's really light, it doesn't have the kind of power to settle down, and it hangs brightly on the branches. But Gus had clearly fallen, something that had to sink under gravity, but was trying to struggle in the wind. It seems that his youth is not in spring, but in autumn.
It is of course the right way to use the coherence of the camera to narrate, but the smooth sequence is very "stagnant" compared to the youth of the ups and downs, so Gus's narration is not vertical. Many of his films, especially those Movies about blond boys have flexible contexts. In "Paranoid Park", the narrative is like a complete creek that encountered a rocky beach, disrupted its integrity, is messy, and overflows.
His lenses are also very bright, even if they are occasionally deliberately out of focus. The boy's face is the focus of the close-up, staring at him many times. The director's personal hobby is not ruled out, but seeing the slightest changes in a youthful face, one can't help but feel a sigh of creation. Out-of-focus, hand-held photography, and rough videotape textures seem to have become the hallmarks of messy literary films, so let's use them as much as we like before we get tired of them. And the documentary sense of the shots created by them is often combined with some exquisite clip shots. This difference and contrast form a kind of visual transparency. Combined with the non-linearity of the narrative, it seems to be a style.
The comparison with "Juno" seems more interesting, as both are American youth independent films of the year. The shots and narrative structure of "Juno" are not chaotic. It is a very orthodox shooting method. Although it tells about something unusual, in the end it can be "sublimated" to be embraced by mainstream values, with obvious idealism and Compromise. However, "PP" is different. From the use of technology to the atmosphere conveyed, it is completely non-mainstream temperament, and Gus's usual way of expressing deep pain with lightness seems to be more fancy here. Although it is a little mere formality, the beauty of the form is already invaluable.
In Gus's so-called "lightness to express deep pain" aesthetics, what is the pain in it is indeed a big question. In my opinion, his pain has never been realized. The pain of youth that people usually guessed seems to be somewhat borderline, but it is still difficult to fully summarize. Speaking to Xuanli, it seems to be able to talk about the characteristics of the times. Alex's generation doesn't seem to care about anything. They don't have the political enthusiasm of their parents at this age, and they don't have any difficulties in life to worry about. However, it always seems to be missing something. Gus's lightness, in fact, it comes from since.
Also, its sound is very good, the soundtrack is second, the sound effect is really good, the part of the shower is very good.
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