A Cinematic Forgery
Gus Van Sant's scene-by-scene refilming of Hitchcock's Psycho is strictly for the birds.

PSYCHO
With Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy
Screenplay by Joseph Stefano, from the novel by Robert Bloch
Directed by Gus Van Sant

WE ALL KNOW that Alfred Hitchcock was a meticulous director who created movies unlike any we'd ever seen. He was the Van Gogh, Monet or Leonardo of his time - one of the true original voices, who set standards and, more importantly, advanced the a rt. His Psycho (1960) is more than just a "good" movie or more than even a "great" one. It's unique - like "Sunflowers," "Water Lilies" or The Mona Lisa.

We also know that Gus Van Sant is Hollywood's only openly gay A-list director, who nonetheless has shunned making gay-themed films, unlike the way, say, Spike Lee has enlightened us with black films. Instead, the pedantic Van Sant has chosen to make sulle n indie movies (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, My Own Private Idaho) with tacit gay themes, or Hollywood movies with theoretical gay undercurrents (like the campy To Die For), or with the vaguest hints of homoeroticism (like Good Wil l Hunting).

Now he's taken his penchant for burying themes and remade the most closeted "gay" film of them all: Hitchcock's Psycho, the story of Norman Bates, a disturbed young man who's so unnaturally attached to his mother that he keeps her rotting corpse in his basement and assumes her personality. When Norman finds himself attracted to women (like the accidental fugitive Marion Crane) who stay at his isolated roadside motel, he dresses as Mother and kills the interloper - a level of misogyny that suggest s something more than his merely being a "mama's boy."

In the '60s, Norman's shocking dysfunction played out like an Oedipal complex, complete with a didactic shrink who explains it in Freudian terms. In the revisionist '90s, we tend to suspect it was something else - especially now that we know Anthony Perk ins, who played Norman, was a deeply conflicted gay man. So this actor knew instinctively how to portray a character who harbored a secret, and his performance as Norman is lean, subtle and naturalistic.

Van Sant claims he remade Psycho to bring this classic story to a new generation - as if you're all too stupid to appreciate the original, which still resonates today. Certainly lots of movies have been remade, and goodness knows, from Barrymore to Olivier to Branagh, Shakespeare has been done over and over.

But Shakespeare wrote plays, which are meant to be restaged and reinterpreted, even on film (which the bankable bard would surely have loved). And let's not confuse a beloved Hollywood entertainment classic, or a classic of a particular movie genre, with a touchstone work of cinema art. In essence, by remaking Psycho, Van Sant has attempted to repaint The Mona Lisa.

Until now, as far as I can remember, a filmmaker has never tried this. Some directors overhaul classic Hollywood movies and revise them to suit a new generation. But Van Sant has used Hitchcock's 1960 script and virtually all of Hitchcock's shots and came ra angles.

So how is Gus Van Sant's Psycho? (It hurts a little just to say that phrase, as if, in time, people will begin to confuse the two films, or even forget that Van Sant's film is a forgery.) Well, aside from some of the acting, it's strictly paint by numbers - only Van Sant uses color paint to modernize Hitchcock's black and white. It's solidly made, with some effective use of lighting. But unless you take the time to compare it scene by scene with the original, Van Sant has made a film that's altogether unnecessary even by Hollywood standards.

You might say Van Sant's film is 98% just like Hitchcock's film. Of course, the DNA of a chimpanzee is 98% just like the DNA of a human.

Where Hitchcock's humor was droll and macabre, Van Sant is self-conscious and cerebral. He retains some anachronisms knowingly. He swiftly mocks a moment or two of silliness in the original. He employs a touch of camp early in the movie, as if to show how archaic Hitchcock's film has become. Now and then he does away with some of Hitchcock's most famous techniques, as if to say that nothing is necessarily sacred - although almost everything is after all. He even throws in a cheap scare to remind us that the bastard child of Psycho is the modern slasher film made for mindless, impatient, teen-age audiences.

None of these trendy post-modern nuances adds up to much, except perhaps for cinema buffs who like to look at frames of film over and over. Van Sant's Psycho doesn't feel like it takes place in the '90s or the '60s, which may be what he wanted. I just can't fathom the point of doing that, and this movie doesn't make me want to search for it.

Viggo Mortensen plays Marion Crane's lover Sam, although "plays" is hardly the word. Surely Van Sant could have found a beefy boy-toy actor who doesn't mumble his dialogue or slur his words (and not, I think, to make us suspicious about why Mar ion wants him). As Marion, Anne Heche is ruefully miscast. She's an aggressive, teary-eyed actress, and Marion Crane (expertly created by Janet Leigh) is coolly introspective. Heche doesn't seem to know what to do with herself, and you can see her acting every moment she's on screen. She's merely impersonating a woman like Marion without understanding her, and she makes the first 40 minutes of the movie uncomfortable.

Much more interesting is Julianne Moore as Marion's sister. In 1960, Lila Crane was pensive and fretful; in the '90s, she an irritable, sharp-tongued, feminist type who doesn't appreciate Sam's macho act. It's a playful revision, and Moore handle it cris ply. William H. Macy does the movie's best imitation as the detective Arbogast, drawing on Martin Balsam's original performance and gently modernizing it.

But the highest honors go to Vince Vaughn, who steps into the unforgettable Tony Perkins role. Where Perkins' Norman was lithe, edgy and lost in his situation, Vaughn interprets Norman as slightly more self-aware and - most daring of all - unquestionably heterosexual (he masturbates as he peeks at the disrobing Marion through the hole in the wall). Vaughn's acting is astutely complex in every sound and gesture, even when Norman titters his nervous bird-like laugh. At least someone in the dull landscape of Van Sant's vanity project found a way to give us something exciting to watch.