When the human brain picks up the outline of something we have already seen and finds nothing new in a movie, it starts to make us sleepy and we tend to fall asleep.
One of the best films in history is Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) with a modern narrative structure, great performances, iconic, never going out of style.
But why remake it, out of pure experimental vanity on the part of its director Gus Van Sant, the seriousness of the matter is that he shot almost 100% of the same film shot by shot without touching almost a comma of the original script, so that this daring would be punished with a resounding box office failure.
In the original film we find false guilt, double personalities, lies, the voyeuristic gaze or repressed sex. In this remake the genuine transgressive spirit of the 60's film is lost.
Additionally, the leading actors are not very charismatic and imbue their roles with little character, making the film a drag to watch. Gus Van Sant's Psycho (1998) is a remake full of well-known actors who don't fit their roles, making it a casting mistake.
In 1998 I had a VHS video club and this film has the honor of being the one that had the lowest rotation among my customers, and those who saw it returned it to me included without rewinding half of the VHS, I would ask them why this was happening and they would answer, I fell asleep.
Anne Heche, ( peacefully rest her soul) as Marion Crane , does not remind us of Janet Leigh. Janeth Leigh looks pretty, quite beautiful and sexy, in this film Heche looks scrawny. Leigh's thoughtful gestures made her look seriously worried, longing, expectant, and mysterious. Heche looks nervous, and cold. Here the theft from her boss is $400,000.00, while in Alfred Hitchcock's original it was $40,000.00.
Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates is fascinating, showing us vulnerability and innocence and later perverse evil and unhealthy sexual obsessions. The mad killer, or psychotic, only comes out when his madness comes out when you least expect it, whereas in this new version the killer Norman Bates played by Vince Vaugh is clearly someone disturbed, not a wolf in sheep's clothing. The Norman Bates of the original film was a shy, timid boy; this one has a much more aggressive relationship with Marion, whom he openly desires sexually.
The details that in Perkins suggested a feminine subconscious, in Vaughn's case become very aggressive gestures that live within a split personality.
In this new version Julianne Moore plays Lila Crane , (Marion's sister), and she stands out above the other actors in terms of presence and acting, even when she says nothing , but the main characters are supposed to stand out as much or more than her, who is a supporting actress and does not appear so much on stage. In the original film Vera Miles acted correctly but at the level of a supporting character.
Both Jean Gavin (in the original) and Viggo Mortenssen (in the remake) play Marion Crane's lover, named Sam Loomis both actors are shown athletic and stocky, with the difference that Gavin in the original shows his torso and arms are bare and in the remake Mortenssen shows us his naked athletic buttocks.
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William H. Macy is Detective Milton Arbogast, who appears investigating the facts with the victim's lover and her sister after the protagonist is murdered, he has an acting style that makes him look charismatic. This same role was played by Martin Balsam in the original film but his presence was not as forceful or charismatic as the actor in the new version.
In the first version of the film the theme of voyeurism feels perverse, Norman through a hole in the wall spies on the protagonist who undresses in the room he assigns her, the scene looks sinister, period. In this new version the emphasis is on the hole, on her undressing, on his eye looking through the hole, it looks like we are watching a porn movie and what in the original is artistic and scary, in its remake is sensationalist and clumsy.
In the original film the shower scene is creepy, very artistic and full of suspense and terror, in the new version, being filmed in color, is more bloody and also shows the completely naked body of Anne Heche, the scene looks gimmicky and sensationalist. The sense of suspense is lost by being so explicitly shown.
In depicting Bates' mother, there is something mysterious and sinister about her, but she doesn't seem as scary as in the first version.
Gus Van Zant's Psycho was filmed almost letter by letter and scene by scene identically to the original, the original credits were imitated by adding color, the famous Rick Baker recreated the mummy of Norman's mother. Danny Elfman reinterpreted the mythical soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann, but the quality of the film is not the same, the essence of suspense was lost.
Emulating the master Hitchcock, Van Sant makes a cameo in the same scene in which Alfred Hitchcock had his cameo in the original film, appearing this talking to a man dressed as the filmmaker in the sixties film, trying to convey that it is Hitchcock himself scolding him.
Joaquin Phoenix Tobey Maguire, Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard, Jeremy Davies, and Henry Thomas were considered to bring Norman Bates to life. Given what I consider to be poor casting direction I doubt that these actors, (all better than Vince Vaugh) would have raised the level of this film.
The big mistake of Gus Van Sant was to have made a copy, rather than a new vision of the same story, additionally his main actors are not convincing in their roles being surpassed by the secondary ones. What the master Hitchcock suggested Van Sant makes it more explicit.
I had to watch this film in six parts as it has the uncanny power to put me to sleep.
What Psycho from 1998 proves is that art is not replicable.
I hope you liked this post which is my entry for the Cine TV Contest #30 - Movie That Made You Fall Asleep. Link Here.
Greetings to all and good luck to all participants.