A Masterpiece Dismembered
Gus
Van Sant's Botched Taxidermy Job
Those of you out
there (who know me) know I'm not
such a Hitchcock "purist" that I shun
everything out there in the suspense genre,
lest it be directed by the
Master himself. I have touted the
virtues of many a homage to Hitch or
even downright imitations, from "Charade,"
"Mirage," "The Spanish
Prisoner," "Obsession," "High Anxiety,"
"True Lies," "The Bride Wore
Black," "Cape Fear" (1962 Version, of
course) and "Sea of Love" to Hitchcock-influenced films such as"Carlito's
Way," "Goldfinger," "Taxi Driver" and "Gattaca." However,
this so-called "remake" from Gus Van Sant is an abomination.
The acting is worse than the High School
for the Deaf Thespian Troupe;
no costumes by Rita Riggs or Edith Head
- I think they were picked out
by a blind man walking through the Salvation
Army thrift shop. The
movie has been printed on color film:
That makes a whole lot of sense
for showcasing the film's star, the chalky
and pasty Anne Heche who
butchers Janet Leigh's defining role (played
with much incisive
intelligence by Leigh) worse than Norman's
mother does unsuspecting
bathers. ANNE HECHE HAS GOT TO BE
THE BIGGEST AIRHEAD
IN THE WORLD! What an idiot! How
did this woman ever get allowed
to be in the movies?!?
Viggo Mortensen turns
John Gavin's competent and utilitarian
performance into the worse redneck shtick
I've ever seen. THIS IS WORSE
THAN WHEN ROBERT DE NIRO (otherwise an
excellent actor) TRIED TO DO A
SOUTHERN ACCENT IN THE BOTCHED REMAKE
OF "CAPE FEAR."
Bernard Herrmann's score
is one of the saving graces of the film,
but is as incongruous with the action
on the screen as it would be if
scored to "Bambi." It's a worse
case a pearls before swine than when
Jimmy Page sold out by re-doing Kashmir
with "Puff Daddy." Further,
Danny Elfman tries to "improve" upon Herrmann's
straightforward and
brutal score by adding echo-effects, doubling
notes and adding "eerie"
sounding strains on the upper strings.
These gratuitous notes WRECK the
whole effect of Herrmann's "black and
white" music. It sounds like
Dimitri Tiomkin trying to improve upon
Richard Wagner, except Dimitri
Tiomkin was way more talented than Mr.
Elfman is.
But the worst part of
this flick is Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates.
He's way too big and masculine for the
part, and comes across almost as
much as a mama's boy as does Mike Ditka.
However, as if on cue to
"remind" us of his neuroses, he forces
a hackneyed and unconvincing
"nervous" laugh every few seconds.
Hell, forget about Anthony Perkins,
even Jean-Claude Van Damme could've done
better than Vaughn's
sophomoric performance.
Julianne Moore (in Vera
Miles' role as Lila) and William H. Macy (as
Arbogast, the detective) give solid, competent
performances
(respectively), but Macy's wardrobe
makes him look boyish. No, not in
the James Dean or Danny Kaye kind of way,
but rather in the
a-four-year-old -just-tried-on-daddy's-clothes
manner. Unfortunately,
"Daddy" must have been a cheap pimp from
the 80's trying to look like
Miami Vice on a K-Mart budget. They flop
about Macy's frame like a
GP-medium tent. Julianne Moore
has been "modernized" by toting
a Sony Walkman hither and yon. At
the point where she and Sam are about
to see Sheriff Chambers, to report a missing
person (Heche), Lila
punctuates her exit from the scene with
"let me get my Walkman." Her
sister and $400,000.00 (inflation) are
missing, but can't forget the
tunes!
That's because this
movie has been made "relevant" for the MTV
generation: Dumbed down, so that
even in life and death situations, one
has "Attention Deficit Disorder."
Many other lines have been dumbed
down, such as Martin Balsam's "if it doesn't
gel, it isn't aspic." From
Macy's mouth, it becomes "Jell-o," apparently
because aspic would be
over the heads of the McDonald's crowd.
Despite trying to "modernize"
the look of the movie, the dialogue is
98% from Joseph Stefano's original script.
That script was written in
1959-60, during the Golden Age of Television,
when shows like "Twilight
Zone," "Perry Mason" and - yes - "Alfred
Hitchcock Presents" gave
viewers intelligent fare, from writers
such as Roald Dahl, Frederic Brown, Paddy
Chayefsky and Rod Serling. Van Sant's
attempt to use the same script
falls flat on its face, because there
aren't many actors available any
more who can deliver a straight line,
without all the sighing, giggling,
breathing, huffing, puffing and "ironic"
twinges that have infested
today's acting (some call it "realism,"
I call it "ersatz emotion").
Van Sant's "Psycho" has a cast of characters
right out of what's worst
about today's TV, from the ER-clones to
"Oprah" to that laughless
so-called "comedy" by Heche's girlfriend,
"Ellen."
I could go on, but please,
spend the $8.00 yourself an be insulted
in person with the most flaccid, listless,
vapid, inane and embarrassing
dreck ever to hit the screen. This
movie is about as suspenseful as a
episode of "Barney." Except, it
took more talent to create and execute"Barney" than it did to resuscitate
this corpse.
