# Psycho (1998)

### reviewed by
Wallace Baine

    Psycho
    by Wallace Baine
    Santa Cruz Sentinel film writer

Alfred Hitchcock makes his obligatory cameo appearance in the original `Psycho' early on in the movie. From inside a storefront office, we see Hitchcock's unmistakable profile standing on the sidewalk outside, waiting for a cab perhaps, his face turned away. Gus Van Sant's absurdly obedient remake contains the same shot. But the difference is telling. Van Sant doesn't merely take Hitchcock's place, to wait for his own cab. Here, from the same office and from the same angle, we see two men instead of one: Gus Van Sant, facing us, chatting amiably with the same melon-shaped figure we briefly glanced the first time. There is a point at which admiration bleeds over into adoration and because Van Sant has so clearly crossed that line, Alfred Hitchcock is afforded a uniquely bizarre media-age tribute. His movies aren't being re-invented; they're being cloned. This new `Pyscho' is less a remake than the most hyped karoake act in history. Its only distinguishing feature is color film. Other than that, it's the same movie. Of course, Van Sant is making no apologies. Enlisting the help of Hitchcock's widow Pat, who appeared in the original, Van Sant worked from Joseph Stefano's 1960 script and, in fact, used freeze frames from Hitchcock's film to make his own. Stud film composer Danny Elfman pulled a similarly monkey-see-monkey-do act on Bernard Herrman's original screeching-violins score. The result is a film that draws attention to its anachronisms. Corny cinematic techniques common in the age of black-and-white -- echo-chamber interior dialogue, swirling, fake-looking backdrops -- are kept intact. Though Van Sant makes a point to make his story contemporary (the date in the opening shot is Dec. 11, 1998, 2:43 p.m.), there are certain aspects, namely the throwback wardrobes, that make the setting in time delightfully ambiguous. Is there, for example, in this day and age, an office in Phoenix, Arizona without air conditioning? The acting, however, is thoroughly contemporary. Anne Heche who plays the doomed Marion Crane is much more nuanced and world-weary than Janet Leigh in the original. In the film's first scene, when Marion is getting dressed in a by-the-hour hotel after a session of lovemaking with her lover Sam (Viggo Mortensen), she delivers the same line Leigh had done 40 years earlier: `I'll lick the stamps,' except that this time Sam in standing near the window nude and Heche's eyes slide daringly below his waist. I would have liked to see more of that kind of ironic script re-interpretation. But from that point on, the film mostly stays earnestly true to the original. Julianne Moore, who plays the Vera Miles role as Marion's worried sister, carries a distinct post-feminist aggressiveness which goes along fine with the Walkman headphones draped around her neck. But William H. Macy, in the Martin Balsam role of the private investigator, has the practiced look of a 1950s film-noir gumshoe. To those who have never seen the original `Psycho' -- and you have to believe that even a significant number of people who've come of age in the `Scream' generation have seen it on video -- Vince Vaughn might make a compelling Norman Bates. But in a film that all but begs comparison with the original, Vaughn pales next to Tony Perkins. The significance of Hitchcock's `Psycho' is that it was one of the first horror films to suggest that monsters can indeed hide in amiable, clean-cut, mother-loving nice guys. Perkins, with his Eddie Haskell grin and bright-eyed attentiveness, was the perfect embodiment of that idea. These days, however, such an image and the psychological theories of split personalities that underly it are old news, hardly shocking even to fourth-graders. We live in O.J.'s America, after all. Norman Bates can't surprise us anymore. Which is my problem with Vince Vaughn, a solid actor who for all his gifts can't mask the fact that he could be a wacko. We are much more skeptical as filmgoers these days to buy Vaughn as Bates. It would be more surprising if Vaughn's Bates turned out to be an innocent guy. Taken on its own merits, Van Sant's `Psycho' is a stylish, attractive remake. You can't quibble with a movie so tight in plot and characterization. But in context, watching this `Psycho' is a weird experience. To anyone familiar with Hitch's movie, it is nigh near impossible to lose yourself in the story of a young woman in trouble who meets a brutal end by a chance encounter at a seedy hotel. You won't be paying attention to the story of Marion Crane. You'll be paying attention to how Anne Heche is playing Marion Crane and that uses a different set of esthetic muscles. Gus Van Sant makes the assumption that most movie-goers watch films with the same corrupted technical eye of the would-be director. He does nothing to help us suspend that disbelief.

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