Psycho (1998): Dissecting the Auteur
UNIVERSAL
When Gus Van Sant – an indie darling, hot off the press of the academy award winning Good Will Hunting – announced in the late 1990s he was going to remake Alfred Hitchcock’s monumentally influential, 1960s picture Psycho, it is safe to say many were left aghast, albeit interested. A secondary announcement of that this will be a shot for shot remake further caused both uproar and anger at taking a supposed biblical piece of cinema canon and not justifying its existence in the form of a remake. The casting of relative newcomers Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche further left this project be viewed in quite an unflattering light. Released to almost unanimous critical and commercial failure, Sant’s Psycho saw a plateau of a career, with it only having a revival of sorts a decade later with the Sean Penn-led Harvey Milk biopic, Milk, after a varied assortment of under-seen and vastly underrated work between the two projects.
On first initial viewing, it’s hard to detach and not utterly annihilate this project on its surface level approach. It’s a blasé, indifferent, cold – an empty rendition of a classic without a touch of evolution, only to poison the well of the house that built it. For many, this sentiment still rings true almost twenty five years later; those very thoughts and feelings can’t be shaken or calmed with this specific project of Sant’s choosing a venture as sacred as Psycho. That being said, after further analysis and the years of commercial greed and emptiness of the cinematic market in numerous articles, features and news in the release of remakes, prequels, sequels, reboots and saturation of technical and cinematic originality. It becomes evidently clear that the project that Gus Van Sant created with his rendition of Psycho is not the one note creation it seems at first glance but a damning, meta and critical analysis on the authenticity of the auteur, the important of performance and the redundancy of a market that in the context of release was beginning to take shape of monetary greed.
Beginning with the most clear instruction and evidence of Van Sant’s process here is in retaining of all visual, verbal and audible cues orchestrated by director Alfred Hitchcock, writer Joseph Stefano and composer Bernard Herrmann. Nothing is created in originality by Van Sant throughout the one hundred and three minute running time. Even going to painful recreations of iconic and memorable sequences, such as the infamous shower sequence as well as the staircase fall with included rear projection as what was done in the 1960 film itself. At first glance, this seems like all one large and shallow homage in painful recreation. But at what cost and thesis? Not resting on the shoulders of Van Sant being the biggest fan of Psycho that has ever lived only for him to take the material and become enemy number one? Not likely. What Gus Van Sant is evoking here is the analysis of the auteur theory. Defined as “the director is viewed as the major creative force in a motion picture” which would describe the very essence of Hitchcock’s power in fighting both the technical and social restrictions of the time regarding the cinematic medium with flair, prowess and calling cards on a thematic level. Psycho maybe the most defining feature of the director’s filmography to describe the above details. So again, if Van Sant is retaining all visual, verbal, audible and thematic qualities and powers of Hitchcock, what originality does the director bring and what is he trying to accomplish with this depiction?
The one thing that Van Sant cannot replicate, mirror or copy 1:1 is the performances. He cannot replicate that of Anthony Perkins’ paranoid underbelly or Janet Leigh’s terror. It has to be replicated on an emotional level by other performances. In this case, casting Vaughn and Heche to fill these roles, both accomplished and talented performers who should not struggle nor fail to evoke and illicit the themes demanded of the feature and arcs. Yet they remain so far removed of what came before them, they illustrate the same ripples but the waves of the impact are nonetheless nonexistent. By falling on his sword and ultimately putting his entire cast in the crosshairs of critical annihilation, Van Sant is proving one very clear point in that the auteur theory is nonsense. By retaining all iconic and inseparable pieces of technical prowess from Hitchcock and only changing the performances, Van Sant is proving how invaluable, unique and highly influential performance alone is within the cinematic medium. He is proving that it is not just Hitchcock’s control over the project to substantiate the auteur theory but the sheer levels of emotional and immersive intelligence of its performers that give sustenance and further depth to a project that needs a puppet master who also knows the importance and impact of what the puppets do for an audience. Now the first thing detractors suggest is the impact of Hitchcock’s choice of casting and therefore the auteur theory and its importance are still retained. That is before Hitchcock’s own sentiments and vocal opinion of performers ultimately as “cattle” in which would infer his lack of hands-on and further impetus of orchestrating his cast to a degree of unanimous command. Of which would greatly weigh the talent and impact of Perkins and Leigh of their own volition and ability. The small detail of a smile, a flickering eye-lash, a brow wrinkled. All details of important but personal factors that can’t be replicated, caught by celluloid in the moment and captured for life. It is the performance that weights the auteur theory down; in that the performances are the swinging factors of how emotionally and immersive the thematic and tone lands for complete and utter control over the audience.
In an almost genius ideology, Van Sant justifies and evokes his point by retaining all importance and value of Hitchcock’s work. Even before knowing the critical and commercial annihilation of his own project. He never allows or infers Hitchcock’s (arguable) magnum opus to be opened up to criticism or critique. It’s an incredibly selfless act in which his own art is allowed to be separated to its original by honouring the work of Hitchcock in retaining it: ironically being the first thing that was dissected and unanimously targeted for in the first place. By doing so, Van Sant retains his avant garde experiment at no cost but his own. A factor that he would greatly prosper from if successful and of course drown in if the project, as did, never truly hit the heights of its abstract.
Furthermore, perhaps not consciously, but seeing the thesis Gus Van Sant undertakes with Psycho, it should be mentioned that with his remake he is also calling into question the reduction and redundancy of the remake within cinema. Arguably, this is the take with the greatest weight in most circles who view the film with an abstract critical lens. Analysing said picture with a view of how dense and one-note the feature is when compared to its original without a form of evolution, which two decades after release becomes more and more common in the likes of Flatliners, Jacob’s Ladder, Alfie, The Amityville Horror, Arthur, so on so forth for years and years to come. Van Sant, a notorious indie filmmaker, is perhaps further stating the redundancy of these spectacles in the face of the originals not evolving or elevating the material but mundane and nonexistent profit which saturates the market and puts further pressure on independent studios and projects to get made. Which, in context of the late 90s and then early 2000s where the small explosion of the superhero genre would implode into monetary financial greed that, is still crippling the independent market into nothingness and nonexistent. Creating an industry of safety blankets of massive financial burdens of half a billion dollar budgets on one feature tied into a connective universe against fifty features of diverse and varied markets. This lack of variation and ultimately resulting limited market place sadly creating the likes of independent film business practices of A24 which highlights a cult like mentality of limited release and craze only to be weakly distributed or frozen out to the masses of who otherwise are unable to see said feature until physical media which in turn is another issue of distribution.
On release, Van Sant’s Psycho was and for some still remains a seemingly barebones, hollow and one-note remake without an ounce of merit or impact. Fast forward two and half decades, and it becomes abundantly clear that Van Sant’s Psycho is a marvelous, avant garde experiment at proposing the nature of what is the auteur and how impacting it is within the medium. Sacrificing his own credibility and career to do so on the largest stage to also condemn Hollywood at butchering a classic without meaning and merit of further depth or dynamic. Arguably the only one of its kind until Lana Wachowski evoked similar sentiments and frustration at the industry, the market and Hollywood with The Matrix Resurrections. By taking a project near and dear to her heart with major studio backing and production to chastise and engage in the lack of originality and naivety of Hollywood in regurgitating the same ideals without further evolutionary or elevated discourse, and like Van Sant only waiting to be proven correct in what for the latter was years but the former it seems in only a matter of months to be wholly correct.
