Review: Psycho (1998)

Fresh off of the success of Good Will Hunting, director Gus Van Sant had carte blanche to make whatever movie he wanted.  And he chose to not just do a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but an almost shot-for-shot remake.  It was an audacious choice, and one that was likely to fail no matter what, but I can't help but love that it happened.  Not because I think the movie is good (the movie is not by any stretch good), but because I love it as a film school thought experiment made reality.  Can you mimic something so completely and still have it as effective as the original?  Or is there some sort of undefined alchemy present in the making of a movie that can never hope to be recaptured?

This version of Psycho doesn't definitively answer those questions, but it does make a compelling argument for the answers to be 'No' and 'Definitely.'

I'll knock out the differences first.  The movie has more nudity, right out the gate.  I don't know that this was added as anything more than a 'I can get away with this in 1998' change, but at least in the instance of the opening scene with Viggo Mortensen (as Sam Loomis, the boyfriend) and Anne Heche (as Marion Crane, the doomed), the change makes for a humorous moment as Marion tells the completely nude Sam he cannot follow her out because 'he has to put on his shoes.'

The movie also changes the amount of money stolen to a more modern $400,000 and implies a bit of a media frenzy at the end after Norman has been arrested.  The movie somewhat updates the costumes, but not completely: the styles range over all the decades from 1960 to 1998, and not to the movie's benefit.  It does however, feed into the feeling that this film is a fever dream.

The last major change is the violence.  More of it is shown - again, likely because now it could - but Van Sant inserts flashes of random images meant to invoke the character's life 'flashing before their eyes.'  It also doesn't work, and this more than any of the other changes is one I wish he had not made.

I'll also note the change to color from black and white, but I don't really find it to be of any significance to how the film is perceived.  If it does distract or impact the movie in any way, it wasn't in such a way that I took note of it.

So, with that commentary out of the way, how do I feel about the rest?  Mixed, to put it mildly.

Two scenes in particular stand out to me as proof that there is a kind of alchemy in the making of a movie:  The first is the scene where Marion interacts with the police officer after sleeping in her car.  It's not a particular noteworthy scene in the original, but it just seems weird and out of place in the remake.  The second is when Norman Bates (Vince Vaughn, back when he still tried to be at least a little interesting as an actor) has to clean up after 'Mother' has murdered Marion.  Nothing about the scene noticeably changes, but it feels like the remake version takes so much longer.

The actors all had an interesting choice in how to approach this remake, and the decisions range all over the spectrum.  A personal favorite of mine is Rita Wilson as Caroline, a coworker of Marion's.  She plays the character as a mean gossip, and it is one of only two performances that go in a completely different direction from the original.

The other is Julianne Moore (as Lila Crane, the sister).  She plays Lila as a much angrier, desperate person as opposed to Vera Miles's take on the character.  It's a breath of fresh air in the movie, especially once paired with Viggo Mortensen's most casual take on the boyfriend character.  They play off each other very well and feel like the only two performances that were on the same wavelength.

Anne Heche is fine as Marion.  It's a hard role to make your own without showing that you are making it your own, but she does an adequate job.  Janet Leigh's stylized performance was in service to Hitchcock's vision, whereas this one feels like it is trying to find wiggle room within Van Sant's.  Again, it isn't terrible, but the weight of the performance that preceded it is visible throughout.

The biggest disappointment is Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.  Saddled with a role just as iconic as Heche's, he does try to make it his own or at least do something different with the interpretation, but it just fails.  Which happens!  Sometimes an experiment, like a shot-for-shot remake of an iconic film, just doesn't work out, as happens here with Vaughn.  I just wish there was something I could point out as a success, but nothing works: the weird giggle, the overt masturbation scene, not even the facial acting of the final monologue really works.

Pretty much every other character is absolutely fine.  William H. Macy (as Arbogast, the private investigator) is normally an actor I enjoy and he does fine in this role, but not even he could get me invested in the character.

Overall, I'm happy to watch this film a second time after first watching it back in 1998.  It doesn't work, but sometimes it is nice to talk about an interesting failure.  At least it tried something different and weird.

5 out of 10