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This isn't your father's kind of movie remake. More like a facsimile than a redo, Psycho circa 1998 is at once old and new -- old because it's practically a literal reprise of the original, new because of its brashly experimental nature. Director Gus Van Sant, feeling his oats following the very successful Good Will Hunting, allows himself a filmic indulgence heretofore untried, one not without its attendant controversy: his retro homage to Sir Alfred is a scene-by-scene copy of the original, except in colour this go-round.
It is as if Mr. Van Sant single-clicked Hitchcock's black and white 1960 classic, moved his cinematic cursor to file, and then clicked duplicate. Voila. It's alive!.....it's alive!.....sort of. As is the case with all laboratory-manufactured monsters, there are inherent kinks. Van Sant's slavish devotion to the original, though impeccably filmed, is kind of ghoulish. But its actual horror quotient pales in comparison to the slasher slice and dice stuff that claims the genre these days. Still, no modern horror purveyor can match that great Bernard Herrmann score, wonderfully re-created here by Danny Elfman.
Just to refresh memories, the story is really pretty interesting. Joseph Stefano's script, based on Robert Bloch's scintillating thriller, once again tells the ill-fated tale of Marion Crane. A real estate executive who, in a weak moment of temptation, makes an immoral choice and takes it on the lam with $400,000 (drat that inflation, it was $40,000 in 1960) in company receipts. Played with a smartly interpreted professionalism by Anne Heche, impulsive Marion's initial plan is to get her lover, Sam (Viggo Mortenson in the role John Gavin originated), out of debt and hence render him marriageable. However, as she high-tails it out of Arizona, a snoopy state trooper shakes her up, the weather turns typical horror movie bad, and exhaustion sets in. So it only makes sense that she stops for some R&R at what has to be the spookiest, most out of the way hostelry in California.
At Bates Motel, she is welcomed by creepy Norman Bates, portrayed valiantly but against all odds by Vince Vaughn. They say that people tell you all you need to know about them in the first fifteen minutes. But perhaps Marion isn't reading between the lines when soulful, doleful Norm, a lonely boy who finds solace in the odd hobby of taxidermy, tells of his poor widowed Mom and how "a son is no replacement for a lover." Mom.....son......lover? All in the same sentence? C'mon Marion!
Ms. Heche's guilt-ridden embezzler has by this time decided to seek redemption and return the money on the morrow. But it's too late; she has committed the one sin for which a Hitchcockian character can never be absolved. She has dared to dream outside the lines. Hence, it's curtains for Marion, shower curtains, to be exact. What follows when boyfriend Sam and sister Lila (Julianne Moore) try to locate the missing gal is primarily dull and anti-climatic, although William H. Macy as private detective Milton Arbogast (the Martin Balsam role) is winningly pesky.
In its time, the 1960 shocker was among the most sexually explicit films to date. The buttoned-down 50's were ebbing in favour of the radical, tune-in 60's, and Hitchcock's film punctuated this end of innocence with what was then truly cutting-edge (pun fully intended, if you get the point) terror. Yet Van Sant's handsome curio piece rarely achieves anything above novelty value.
The experiment is not without its ground swell of media-induced intrigue. Advance publicity noted that the filmmaker even timed scenes to match Hitch's tempo and meter. And in a clever but pretentious conceit that speaks volumes about the artistic ego, the director emulates the master's trademark cameo by making sure to place himself in a scene with a Hitchcock look-alike.
But who cares about all of that? Truth be told thirty-eight years after the movie's release, most likely you only remember one thing about Psycho. So, go ahead. Ask: "What about the shower scene?" Actually, it's rather good insofar as homicidal terror is concerned, and still pretty frightening even though there's never been a horror sequence in the history of cinema that has afforded its audience this many decades to brace itself.
But there's an interesting phenomenon at work here, attesting to how the film has insinuated itself into our national psyche. Americans of Baby Boomer age or older invariably claim 3 certainties in their lives: that they had, but frittered away, Mickey Mantle's rookie baseball card; that they were at Woodstock; and that the blood they witnessed washing down the shower drain in Psycho was crimson red. Most filmgoers are nonplussed when reminded that the original film was not in colour.
Mr. Van Sant's project has engendered a debate far more interesting than the film itself. Some cineastes have even decided to make it their life's work to comb the film for nuances, quirks, and any clues with which the director may have imbued his revivification. The Internet is awash with niggling analysis and comparison: Vince Vaughn's eyebrows don't quite curl with the same demonical emphasis that Anthony Perkins exhibited; Ann Heche makes an unfair fashion statement by wearing orange underwear, whereas Janet Leigh was understandably limited by the black-and-white venue; but, thank goodness, the license plate numbers are identical in both films. All of which has nothing to do with the film's worth and everything to do with the resuscitated Psycho's gimmick/stunt status.
Director Van Sant defends his project by arguing that if a classic play can be done over and over, why not a film? He further notes that the new Psycho affords a whole new generation an opportunity to see the film. Is this a consideration our educational establishment has somehow failed to address? In any case, one must then assume that Mr. Van Sant wouldn't mind if someone in turn decided to replicate his coloured carbon copy. Psycho indeed.
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