This is a still image of the lower half of a man’s corpse neatly severed at the waist, and has considerable impact, as the reactions of the skaters reveal. The main issue for classification lay in the images of the accident – the first presented as a police photograph shown to Alex and other skateboarders in school as the investigation gets under way. The film came to the BBFC for classification in 2007, having won the 60th Anniversary Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in the same year. The results are catastrophic for Alex, who has to deal with his responsibility for the man’s gruesome death on top of everything else in his life. When the guard hits him with a torch, Alex retaliates with his skateboard and accidentally knocks the guard into the path of an oncoming train. One night he hops a freight train for kicks but is spotted by a guard. Van Sant’s choice of non-actors to play the characters, and the carefully-composed visual style are reminiscent of his earlier work, Elephant.Īlex is a skateboarder who strays from home territory to hang out with the 'hard-core freaks' in the park of the title. Unlike a routine thriller, this film refuses to provide a clear resolution concerning Alex’s future. His story is not presented through the conventional cinematic techniques of a thriller, but by Van Sant’s trademark use of dream-like sequences and extended shots that track Alex as he makes his way through the hallways at school, or the mall. Gus Van Sant’s study of teenage alienation and anxiety, based on a novel by Blake Nelson, is set in Portland, where Alex is trying to come to terms with his parents’ impending divorce, the demands of his relationship with his girlfriend Jennifer, and his own need to be accepted by his peers.
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