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BY KIM MORGAN |
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Psycho Rated R Now playing Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was not a perfect movie; it was a perfect experiment. A masterwork of modern filmmaking, black humor and transgressive art, Psycho is still one of the most influential, disturbing and overanalyzed films of all time. Though considered tame by today's standards, Hitchcock's picture was shocking in its time. Not only did it break convention by killing off its star character midway through the film, Psycho showed filmgoers more violence, sexual tension and perversion than they had ever seen in a mainstream picture. For those who had never watched Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, or the films of Kenneth Anger, Psycho was a mind-altering event of mass emotion--a film that aroused viewers through what Hitchcock called "pure film." Though he always thought of his audience first, Hitchcock also intended for Psycho to stimulate filmmakers. He asserted to director and Hitchcock scholar François Truffaut: "Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to filmmakers, to you and me." Would Hitchcock have included director Gus Van Sant in the esteemed company of Truffaut? Though purists shake their heads in disbelief, the answer is yes, of course he would. A showman first and foremost, Hitchcock would probably be amused by Van Sant's remake of Psycho, an undertaking that some are calling unthinkable. Hitchcock's film was such a technical triumph that it was practically an open invitation for others to imitate, which they did in droves. So why shouldn't Van Sant go all the way? Like Hitchcock, Van Sant has shrewdly attempted an experiment of technical trickery in the repackaging of Psycho for a '90s audience. Toying with viewers' notions of modern and classical filmmaking, Van Sant, like Hitchcock before him, runs the risk of offending an older audience schooled in the idea that certain things are untouchable. Van Sant's attempt at Psycho is viewed by some as vulgar. This makes today's nay-saying cinephiles seem as stuffy as the 1960 film-goers who were mortally offended by the infidelity, transvestitism, and Oedipal perversion in the original Psycho. From the Saul Bass opening-credit sequence to the Norman Bates close-up ending, Van Sant has replicated Hitchcock's Psycho almost exactly. The story is the same. A woman named Marion (Anne Heche in Janet Leigh's role) runs out of town with a bunch of stolen money. During a storm she stops at a creepy motel, where she is murdered by the hotel's weird proprietor, Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn in Anthony Perkins' role). A detective (William H. Macy in Martin Balsam's role) is hired to look for her, while Marion's married lover, Sam (Viggo Mortensen in John Gavin's role), and her sister, Lila (Julianne Moore in Vera Miles' role), anxiously wait for his call. When the detective disappears, the sister and the lover set out to find Marion themselves, only to discover that Norman Bates keeps his dead mother preserved in the basement, and that Marion is also dead. So does the film work? Yes and no. It does work because by replicating the brilliant original film shot by shot, line by line and note by note (music by the fabulous Bernard Herrmann), this movie is better than most of late. It doesn't work because it cannot match the original's shocking impact--we already know what is going to happen. Still, Van Sant's picture is a curious bird that deserves to be watched as more than just a lark. Though virtually identical, Psycho 1998 subtly alters the tone, the psychology and the movie experience. The most significant changes come from the actors, rather than the modern setting. Heche, who watched Janet Leigh's scenes before every take, duplicates Leigh's Marion down to details as precise as the hand in which she holds her purse and how she moves her hips when she walks. Yet Heche exudes a ditzier quality. Leigh created an impulsive creature, a nice woman who was mysterious enough to relate to Norman Bates just a little. Heche's Marion seems flirty and slightly dumb. This makes her sister Lila believable as the person who probably had to watch out for her all her life. Moore's Lila is even more pissed off than Miles' version, and she is appropriately brave, curious and horrified by the Bates household. The biggest change in the film, is the casting of Vaughn, the Lothario from Swingers, as Norman Bates. Perkins played Bates as meek, effete and shy, but Vaughn's Bates is boorish, masculine and intelligently evil. Vaughn plays Bates like the school bully who pulls wings off insects and shocks girls with sexual threats. Initially, Vaughn seems much too handsome to be such a weirdo, but as the film rolls on, he becomes grotesque. With his huge forehead, icky laugh and deceptively normal manner, Vaughn's Bates becomes a master fake in the style of Ted Bundy. One never buys for a second that this Bates thinks he is mother. When he smiles at the camera in his last shot, he seems to be saying "the joke's on you, suckers" and we sense that he will, no doubt, escape from the institution. While Vaughn's portrayal was a wise deviation (it would be hard to
follow Perkins' exact footsteps), his is not a sympathetic performance,
and the entire film is even colder than the original. This coldness
is a result of Van Sant's purposeful lack of auteurism, which makes
his Psycho much less the vanity project most expected. His version
is truly an homage to Hitchcock and a celebration of experimental
filmmaking. This Psycho makes one realize just how timeless,
yet modern, Hitchcock's film really was. Even better, it makes you want
to watch the original again.
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