director
Gus Van Sant
screenwriter
Joseph
Stefano
based on
the novel by
Robert
Bloch
producers
Brian Grazer
Gus Van Sant
cinematographer
Christopher Doyle
music
Bernard Herrmann
editor
Amy E. Duddleston
cast
Vince Vaughn (Norman Bates)
Anne Heche (Marion Crane)
Julianne Moore (Lila Crane)
Viggo Mortensen (Sam Loomis)
William H. Macy (Milton Arbogast)
Robert Forster (Dr. Fred Simon)
Philip Baker Hall (Sheriff Al Chambers)
Anne Haney (Mrs. Eliza Chambers)
Chad Everett (Tom Cassidy)
Rance Howard (Mr. Lowery)
Rita Wilson (Caroline)
James Remar (Patrolman)
James LeGros (Charlie the Car Dealer)
Flea (Bob Summerfield)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 105m
u.s.
release: December 4,
1998
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other gus
van sant films
reviewed on this website:
- even
cowgirls get the blues
- to
die for
|
To
prepare for the high-concept new run-through of Psycho,
I intentionally didn't revisit Alfred Hitchcock's classic.
I last saw it a few years ago, and I didn't want it fresh in
my mind. Critics are supposed to review what's in front of them,
but we often don't; we compare a film to the better film in our
heads -- whether it's an adaptation of a book we love (in which
case we've already made the movie in our imaginations), or a
remake of a movie we love. The new Psycho is both an affront
and a challenge to critics. Can we allow Gus Van Sant to escape
the large shadow of Hitchcock -- and should we, given
that Van Sant has quite willingly placed himself there?
The new Psycho seems such a dumb idea that, perversely,
it has slowly become a fascinating idea. A shot-for-shot remake
of a film already etched in the memories of movie buffs? Van
Sant and his new cast have taken up the challenge, and, contrarian
that I am, I'd love to fly in the face of American film criticism
and report that the result is a postmodern triumph of appropriation
and homage. But Psycho doesn't do much for Van Sant, and
he doesn't do much for Psycho. Gus Van Sant should stick
to being Gus Van Sant; those familiar with his idiosyncratic
early work (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho)
may get depressed at his subjugation of his personality. Van
Sant has both eyes on Hitchcock throughout: The Master blots
out Van Sant's own vision.
Van Sant's Psycho comes to seem more of a stunt, a novelty,
than an experiment. For a while, the hot rumor was that Van Sant
had scrupulously reproduced the original film up until the famous
shower scene -- at which point he veered off in a whole other
direction. The rumor had some credibility: People expecting a
remake from first shot to last would be shocked, the way audiences
were shocked at Janet Leigh's abrupt death in 1960. That would
be a great, ballsy way to redo Psycho -- a prankish tribute
to Hitch's power to catch us leaning the wrong way, and precisely
in the mischievous Hitchcock spirit. Sadly, the rumor turns out
to be just that. Van Sant's Psycho is faithfully Hitchcock's
Psycho in word and deed -- if not in spirit or style.
Not all remakes are evil: John Carpenter's The Thing and
David Cronenberg's The Fly are less remakes than remixes
of oldies-but-goodies. But why remake something if you don't
add anything of yourself? That's what Psycho lacks, though
fans of Van Sant will bend over backwards to cite parallels to
his early work -- a gay subtext, for instance. And it's pointless
to remark upon how slavishly a director apes another's work.
Van Sant does it, all right -- though he can't resist splicing
a few Private Idaho-like random images into the murder
scenes, as if the knife slashes were tearing open the killer's
subconscious, or some such heady nonsense. But you or I could
do the same dupe job, given $25 million. (That may be part of
Van Sant's subversive, Warholian point, which I'll get to in
a moment.)
So all a critic can really do with the new Psycho, besides
the obvious "compare and contrast" game, is comment
on the new faces. I wanted to like Anne Heche and Julianne Moore,
two of the best actresses now working, but they're playing ciphers
(a limitation, I think, to be blamed on Joseph Stefano's script),
so they can't add much besides irritation or fear. Vince Vaughn's
Norman Bates won't make you forget Anthony Perkins, but he's
not supposed to. Once I got used to Vaughn's take on Norman --
a giggly, libidinous little boy, rather than Perkins' gawky adolescent
-- I enjoyed his performance, which has reserves of sadness and
pain equal to what Perkins, in his own style, gave Norman. Other
actors, like William H. Macy and Viggo Mortensen, bring little
to the party. They're in the same boat as their director, who's
too intent on duplicating Hitch's set-ups to show his usual mindful
touch with actors.
Gus Van Sant comes from the Warhol school of anti-art, found
art, appropriation and deadpan irony. So this remake may be his
comment on remakes (which he says he hates) -- proof positive
of the artistic bankruptcy of the form. Yet the only way a Psycho
remake can work as a rebuke to remakes is if it flops -- showing
the studios, in the only way they understand, that remakes are
a dead end. If Psycho is Van Sant's fuck-you to Universal
for bankrolling a remake of a classic, I suppose it makes a perverse
sort of sense that Hitchcock himself, who had no love for studio
executives, might have appreciated. Psycho will be debated
for months in the film journals: Does its pointlessness have
a meaning beyond itself?, blah blah blah. That's in the great
tradition of artists -- who are often the same as con artists. |
