|
|
|
|
||
|
It's nearly (but not quite) a shot-by-shot re-creation of the Hitchcock classic with a somewhat arbitrary scheme of updates, with different interpretations of the roles, different cadences in the line readings, a bit more explicit nudity and violence, and the miracle of color. But it's still word for word and edit by edit Joseph Stefano's script with its vulgar humor ("Mom's not herself today," says Norman Bates, when first we meet him), its sense of creepy menace, its cheap but effective shocks and, perhaps most helpful of all, a full orchestration (by Danny Elfman) of Bernard Herrmann's stirring score, which conveyed much of the sense of pathology in the film. So Van Sant has not remade, reinvented, reimagined, reincarnated the original. He's traced it, at a cost of $25 million. Why? Why, indeed? Hmmm, perhaps we should ask a . . . psychiatrist. He'll get all the answers. "Well, I've had a long talk with Gus. Or rather with the Alfred half of Gus's personality. It seems that some years ago, Gus accidentally destroyed a tape of 'Psycho' in his VCR. The guilt was incredible. He couldn't face what he had done. So in his mind, he became Hitchcock. He dressed like him, he talked like him, he was even capable of holding conversations with him. Finally, the Alfred half of him took over and he started making Hitchcock's movies. Why, I've never seen anything like it since that case in Fairvale, California, back in 1960." Thanks, Doc. Knew we could count on you. In the most primitive sense, the film still works. How could it not, with that sturdy script under it, even with its late '50s dialogue flourishes ("I'm looking for my own private island," says Anne Heche in the Janet Leigh role, words that surely have not been uttered by an American woman in at least 30 years, either in films or on Earth). It's less good by far and less provocative by even farther, but so solid is the structure and so ingenious the devices (for example, the downward-looking camera angle in two sequences that seems to represent Norman's madness but really prevents us from seeing a couple of key faces) that we still palpitate when Marion turns on the shower or when Arbogast (William Macy), in his little porkpie hat, heads up the stairs or when Lila (Julianne Moore) heads into the cellar for her interview with nutty Mrs. Bates. Conceptually, however, this "Psycho" is somewhat hamstrung by a grinding literalness. Van Sant's key concept – that is, other than self-indulgence – is to make it more realistic. But making it more realistic doesn't make it better or even keep it the same. It makes it seem more ridiculous, in some ways. What was so chilling about the first was its sense of stylization. Shot on TV-generic sets with a TV crew and a lot of TV-style closeups, it had the vivid clarity of a nightmare, helped immensely by John L. Russell's knife-edge cinematography. All the shadows seemed to be etched in acid and even the performers, with one exception, seemed almost stylizations themselves. Van Sant has cranked up the realism about 20 points, but somehow what he achieves for the effort is a larger sense of banality. For example, Marion's boyfriend and the movie's lame hero-by-default was played originally as a kind of defrocked man in the gray flannel suit by beefy Rock Hudson-look-alike John Gavin, lacking merely a personality, an attitude, a reason for living, a reason for loving Marion and a tie. He was a mannequin. Now, as played by Viggo Mortensen, he's a catalogue cowboy given a specific time, place and style: sideburns, a western accent and cheesy polyester jean jacket. Where Marion's sister, Lila, as played by Vera Miles, was a pert clone of Marion herself, to the same elasticized foundation garments, pointy breasts and perfect pixie haircut, this Lila (Moore) is all stress and neurosis, a grating, semi-hysterical post-feminist woman who shouts in the face of strangers. On and on it goes. The original was set sort of nowhere: an unidentifiable zone just across the California border from Arizona, featureless and stark. This film is set in a real American landscape, with fast-food joints, car washes, pet hospitals and wedding chapels. It makes the strangeness of the plot seem simply ludicrous. Even the blood is more realistic: Instead of that watery black ink that spurted from Marion's veins, this blood has weight, density, texture. It floats in water and curdles on the tile, thick and viscous. It's ickier and somehow more factual and less frightening. Finally there's an issue of performance. Everyone tries hard to bring Van Sant's concept of naturalism to some very arch, theatricalized dialogue, which frequently doesn't play in the cadences of the '90s. Anne Heche's fleeing Marion is probably the most convincing character in the film, but of course she's not at its center. Nor really is anybody except . . . Norman? Norman, is that you, boy? No, it's not. It's Vince Vaughn. Vaughn is okay. Anthony Perkins, however, was spectacular. He had a kind of clammy incandescence, a boy-man who glowed from within with his own pure flame of madness. His bones were close to the surface, so when he clenched his jowls, his transluscent skin rode the tightening of the muscles so that it looked like a snake swallowing a rabbit. His eyes were feral, his body language uncertain, and the lunatic just under the Ivy League stylings of the boy next door radiant and imperishable. In ways, he haunts us to this day. Vaughn can get no closer to this standard than he can get to Pokomoke City, Md. For the camera X-rayed some deep discomfort in Perkins that isn't really there in Vaughn; Perkins wasn't acting, he was being. Vaughn is merely acting, his cupid lips prissy, his little laugh too brittle, his craziness a performance, not a reality. This "Psycho" seems a little nuts.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
