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Just in from "Psycho", myself, and
cllrdr's right. At the very least, this will make an excellent
conversation piece in that reactions will be hotly mixed
(personally, I'm wondering why there wasn't more outrage over
Christopher Reeve's insipid "Rear Window" from a few
weeks ago). Van Sant & co. have essentially remade the
original verbatim, word-for-word, shot-for-shot,
composition-for-composition with a few minor deviations which
probably have more to do with decency codes in Hitchcock's day
than with any real indulgences on Van Sant's part; audiences for
the original were not treated to the sight of Norman Bates
masturbating while watching Marion Crane undress through the
wall, for instance, but did they really think a character
possessing extremely pathological psychosexual difficulties would
do nothing but watch? Lila Crane has a line in this new one
regarding her Walkman which certainly wasn't in the original, but
as far as I could tell, everything else was solidly intact, not
only as far as the script goes, but everything right down to the
editing and camera angles. Van Sant does throw in a few
subliminal frame-inserts during the big "jump" moments
(boiling clouds, a cow on a dirt road, some MTV bondage imagery)
which are distracting not only because they don't really make any
sense, but are rather incongruous with the reverence the rest of
the film attempts, and while Bernard Herrmann's classic score is
preserved, somehow Danny Elfman's new arrangement manages to make
it sound generically like every other horrid Elfman score. And
while an opening caption informs us that the events have been
transplanted to 1998, if it weren't for the cars and that
Walkman, it would be damn hard to tell, what with all the
Vintage/Retro fashions and outdated pop psychology (yes, Boba,
the lengthy epilogue "explaining" Bates' psychosis is
preserved, but since it's delivered here by Robert Forster (sp?)
in full 'aw, shucks' mode you might be able to sit through it) on
display. The only real elaborations on the original naturally
come through the game cast's performances...Julianne Moore,
professional as ever, tries hard to invest the strangely vague
Lila Crane with some depth, but doesn't have enough to work with;
Viggo Mortenson is considerably earthier than his 60s counterpart
(name fails me at the moment); William Macy's extended scene with
Bates is a reminder of just how good he can be in mano-y-mano
situations (check out "Oleanna" for details); Anne
Heche is surprisingly believable, effective and winning; a few
odd surprises in small roles are amusing (the aforementioned
Forster and James Le Gross). Vince Vaughn in the pivotal Bates
role however is quite dreadful, taking the title and running with
it by filling his performance with self-conscious surface tics,
googly eyes, inappropiate high-pitched bursts of laughter, and
various other simple cliches that not only obscure the
character's various levels, but thin the plot by giving him a
neon "I'm dangerous" sign to wear on his head. All in
all, though, the meticulousness of the excercise becomes somewhat
pointless (indeed, why not simply watch the original?); the
impression I'm left with is that Van Sant had a hugely intruiging
conceptual idea, something to do with signifiers and iconography
or something, which was eventually, in finished form, reduced to
folly. His experiment ultimately fails, for me at least (at this
point, anyway...I'm still a little confused), but not for lack of
trying.
I should also mention that the real reason to
see the picture, regardless of the final analysis, is for the
consistently amazing Christopher Doyle's cinematography. He can
do things with, say, headlights and a windshield that are
absolutely devastating.
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