The Dead Don't Hurt

To the End of the World

or

"How Was Your War?" "Too Long. How Was Yours?"

 

It starts out very quietly before we see anything. The sounds of Nature. The slightest of breaths.

 

A knight rides through the woods on horse-back, a little girl waiting for him.

 

It is the last thoughts of Vivienne Le Coudy (Vicky Krieps, she of Phantom Thread), French-Canadian florist/bartender/mother/cook/carpenter/pioneer-woman. She is tended to, watched over, then mourned by her common-law husband Holger Olsen (Viggo Mortensen), Danish carpenter/soldier/sheriff.

 

Vivienne is dead. And the man Olsen wants to kill, Weston Jeffries (Solly McLeod) has just killed five people at the local saloon, as well as the deputy sheriff of the town. He's the son of a local rancher, Alfred Jeffries (Garret Dillahunt) and just no damn good. The mayor, Rudolph Schiller (Danny Huston, in a performance slightly reminiscent of his father), who has business dealings with the man can't have such a massacre go unpunished, so he informs Olsen, who is in the process of burying his wife, of what happened, and assures the sheriff that they have the man who did it. A rather dim employee of the rancher volunteers to take the rap, never realizing that he might be hanged to save the son's neck. Olsen turns in his badge in protest. He has work to do.

 

Being Sheriff will just get in the way.

Sounds like a "typical" Western, doesn't it? But The Dead Don't Hurt, written/directed/starring Viggo Mortenson*, is only familiar in outline form and goes about things quite a bit differently. Mortenson strips away the rituals of Westerns, the shoot-outs, the robberies, the culture clashes with Natives, the chases (other than a brief one), the courtliness between men and women, and shows us the bare-bones and foundations of building a life in the wilderness, where people by necessity are "gig-workers" making use of whatever talents they have to scrape a living out of the dirt. You have to be tough, resilient, and oh-so-patient to eke out an existence, using Nature but fighting it back lest it overcome you.

Mortenson's characters have depth. They seem to have lives off-screen when we don't see them, histories and, hopefully, futures. More is spoken across someone's face than from their lips. And as there is not one Native in the entire movie, it drives home the point that the country was re-tooled under the auspices of immigrants, bringing their pasts with them. The film even feels like a "foreign" film, concentrating on the small moments, lingering on the consequential ones, and the violent ones are over in the time it takes to stop a heart.

There is another aspect to it that I like and always have been fond of—it's non-linear, starting with the death of one character and telling her story in flash-back, but not in an obvious, telegraphed way. The only way you can make the realization that a jump has happened is in paying attention to Olsen's facial hair, starting out with a brushy moustache, and his later, post-Civil War scenes, with a full beard, thus relieving any distracting questions ("Gee, what did he do with the kid?") that will pull you out of the movie—as I sometimes experienced. There are no exclamatory time-stamps holding your hand and making things obvious, but merely relying on the images on-screen to tell the story, the details of which orient you in situ.

I like that. And it allows Mortenson to juggle the story-line in a dramatic way to allow the story to evolve and not be fronted solely by a love story and back-ended by a revenge plot. Time stretches, evolves, and we learn more in this structure than by a simplistic start-middle-end timeline. Things seem to matter more. The character of Vivienne seems to matter more, as she is the center around which the movie revolves.

And in this structure, the film feels more like a memory, a totem of the woman we see dying in the beginning. Despite her early demise in the film, we see her life unfold in the flashbacks, the decisions she makes, the things she endures. It's really her film and the character haunts it—like we're seeing it play out in the moment of her death. And the performance of Krieps is a wonder to behold, played out with restraint, choosing her battles, internalized, not being dramatic about it. Enduring. It's a cliché to say that it's an award-winning performance—it has to be recognized first, and to do that, people have to see it, and I doubt the movie will get the attention it deserves to garner her such acclaim.

Which is a pity. This is already one of my favorite movies of the year (it clicks so many of my "this-makes-a-good-movie" boxes, which run counter to the adrenaline-fueled roller-coasters that drive the weekend box office figures), and I wish people will go out to theaters to see it. It's a big screen movie—especially with the sound—and it will lose a lot on a small video screen, and—god forbid!—on a telephone. It's an appointment movie, where time needs to stop to appreciate it and take it in. But, we live in a different time and a different sensibility than the one portrayed.

More's the pity. But, the mysteries of The Dead Don't Hurt are still percolating through my mind, and it may take another visit to fully appreciate just how good it is.

 

I can't wait.

* He composed the music, too...and is one of the musicians who played it.  

Appaloosa

"The Unforeseeable"

Virgil Cole and Everett Hicks (Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen) law enforcers for hire, have been "pards'" for a long time now. They're two peas in a pod, and when they ride into the town of Appaloosa (in the New Mexico Territory, circa 1882) they already know what they're gonna say to the town-fathers about their marshaling problem. They've done it before; the two form a unit in everything: conversationally, they finish each other's sentences, and where Cole is a pistol man with a fast draw, Hicks has an 8-gauge shotgun that can distribute a wide enough pattern to make a mob think twice....before it cuts them in two. Cole's contract with the town is simple: if he's going to enforce the law, he has to make the laws. As Hicks explains, "Whatever Mr. Cole states, it's law."

Ed Harris' sophomore directorial effort (after the particularly well-done bio-pic Pollack) is a minor western, limited in population and scope. Based on Robert B. Parker's* novel of the same name, it still manages to do what it does very well, and provides a collection of very good actors (including Harris, Mortenson, Renée Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall and Lance Henriksen) with complex roles that they clearly enjoy taking on. These people are infused with quirk, and character drives the story-line. Where Harris is brittle and short with words, Mortenson is laconic and lanky. Zellweger's Allie French happily screws up her face in a pinched manner that I haven't seen before--either mighty pleased with herself, or trying to keep the prairie dust off her face, I'm not sure which. Irons carries on the long tradition of English gentlemen-actors lovingly chewing western scenery.

After making a none-too-subtle point about a town that wants security giving away its freedoms, the film settles into the...what's that word?...resolution of the conflict between Irons' predatory land-baron, Bragg, and the homespun issues that occur with the arrival of Zellwegger's Allie French. Will a triangle develop? Who gets the girl? What happens to men of principle when the compromise of love enters the picture? A held prisoner in the jail reminds one of the Alamo consequences of Rio Bravo, but it's not dwelled upon for very long, and the story keeps advancing, despite the well-traveled terrain into unknown territory.

And I've always had a fondness for Western colloquialisms that arise from each new author tackling Westerns, and Parker and Harris and co-scenarist Robert Knott do not disappoint.

Little details stand out: Harris makes a point of showing the high forehead tan-line that's a permanent part of every hat-wearing citizen of Appaloosa (of course, that would be true, but it's too rarely seen in "perfect make-up" movie Westerns), and his gun-fights are brief, brutal affairs that are over in a flash of wills and smoke. "That happened quick!" muses Hicks after a long-odds gun battle is finished. "Everybody could shoot!" is Cole's tight-jawed reply.

And situations are repeatedly presented showing how much will is required "out there." Hesitancy could mean death. And the rules of the jungle claim jurisdiction even in a desert covered in clap-board. It's refreshing to see a Western that doesn't cloak itself as an epic. The aims of Appaloosa are small, but ring true.

* After John D. MacDonald, Parker is a favorite author when one is looking for pleasingly composed, enjoyably readable genre story-telling. His "Spenser" novels are his C'sTF, but his westerns, and his post-Chandler Phillip Marlowe stories are great fun to relax with.

Green Book

The Odd Couple (Two Guys Looking for Trouble)
or
"I Am Serious. And Don't Call Me 'Doc'"

The National Board of Review has come out with its list of superb films for 2018. Its choice for Best Film, Green Book, seems an odd choice, with so many other films to consider. Still, I can't carp about it; Green Book is an entertaining crowd-pleaser that is warm, funny, and takes on social issues—sure, they're social issues that might have been controversial in its setting of 1962, but now have the safety factor of self-evidence after the resolution of time and conscience.

"Based on a true story," it centers on the relationship between Dr. Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali, who continues to be, as he was in Moonlight, a magnetic presence), a respected jazz pianist and composer, and his chauffeur-muscle, Tony "The Lip" Vallelonga (played by Viggo Mortenson), hired to ferry Shirley around on a record company-sponsored tour through the deep South. The title of the piece comes from the booklet provided to Tony by Shirley's record label that lists the restaurants, attractions, and hotels that allowed "colored" travelers, its full title being "The Negro Motorist's Green Book," "prepared in cooperation with the United States Travel Bureau," and published between 1940 and 1967, three years after the Civil Rights Act. Basically, it was a segregationist's guide to the South to prevent "avoidable" lynchings.

Did I mention this was entertaining?

Tony needs the job, even thought it will keep him on the road and away from his family in the Bronx for two months (the tour actually lasted a year and a half)—his job as a bouncer at the Copacabana Club is on hiatus, as the joint's been shut down for a couple months "for renovations," and although he could get a job working for The Mob, he wants to avoid that. He's a casual racist, in line with most of his family—male relatives drop by when Tony's wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) hires a couple black plumbers to do some repairs, and that issue is brought fairly quickly when he is invited to an interview at Shirley's flat above Carnegie Hall.

Shirley is an imperious presence in his caftan, sitting on what amounts to be a throne, high above his interviewees, but Tony isn't too intimidated, he'll take the job if it's offered but he won't be heart-broken if it isn't. It's easy money and he can do it, and as Shirley says he comes recommended "from several reliable sources." He knows he has the job when Shirley calls him early in the morning and asks to speak to Dolores—he inquires if she is alright with depriving his family of him for two months.

The two couldn't be more different: Shirley is haughty and cultured, a man of with three doctorates, of measured speech and high expectations; Tony is just a mook witha 6th-grade education, smoking and eating simultaneously, his manners "get by" if you're not watching too carefully —Shirley is always watching—and there's a casual rogue to him, enjoying being the enforcer for Shirley's demands at the venues. The doctor may not always approve of his methods, but he is effective at getting the job done.

They are Mutt and Jeff, Felix and Oscar, Stan and Ollie, the one impeccable, refined and contained, and the other, hunched, gregarious and sloppy, the perfect combination of the formal and the absurd, from which comedy flows like seltzer from a spritzer. It helps tremendously that Ali has crack comic timing and a slow burn that's tamped down and merely simmers exquisitely. Even when Tony is chastising him for not knowing Aretha Franklin, or for ever eating fried chicken, Ali's Shirley notes the intemperance and moves on. 

But, he never smiles. Except for a dutiful exception when he stiffly, graciously accepts applause after a piece, Shirley never smiles, exuding dignity throughout the tour and the various engagements as a sign that he should be respected (as if the virtuoso playing didn't inspire it), with his command of the keyboard and his trio being his signs that he should be appreciated by his white, privileged audiences...even in such hostile territory as the South. But, the indignities are always there, in the sub-standard housing facilities that he must use, while his driver rests and relaxes...and can relax...in the white side of town.

The disparity between the two men couldn't be more apparent, but in the South of 1962, it really doesn't matter. Of the two, Shirley gets the worst of it—a man of total class, he is regarded as classless and isn't comfortable either among his all white audiences or his fellow travelers segregated by "the rules" of where they can stay. Tony, however, can move through the class structures with ease. He's white, but doesn't give off New York airs, and he's just as comfortable rolling bones with the black chauffeurs of the country-club set, as he is throwing his weight around among the locals.

The only time Shirley genuinely smiles while on tour.

Tony's also good at schmoozing—it's where he got the nickname "The Lip." He's able to talk the police out of charging Shirley with an incident at a steam-bath, but when he's called an ethnic slur by another cop, words fail him and he head-butts him and gets both he and Shirley thrown in the slammer.. Tony is far less tolerant of disrespect than Shirley is.

But, when it comes to where the rubber meets the road, both men have each other's backs despite that they're both doing the same job—looking for trouble: Shirley is taking the tour to honor Nat King Cole who was dragged off the stage and beaten during a similar tour, and Tony—well, that's what he does for a living.

Listening to a program where director Peter Farrelly was a guest over the weekend, he was described as a director of "raucous" and "bawdy" films—as part of the Pharrelly Brothers directing team, he helped make Dumb and Dumber, There's Something About Mary, Shallow Hal, and Me, Myself and Irene—and they've usually had some controversy attached to them (as Green Book does) for those films pushing the envelope on taste. But, the Brothers Farrelly always hinged their stories on a buried sweetness at the cores of their films, overshadowed somewhat by the raunchy material (Judd Apatow did the same thing—his films might have pushed the envelope on subject matter, but their messages were always a bit...conventional—"R" rated films with a "G" theme).

Green Book is ultimately a "kumbaya" film about racism, and with a jazz beat...where opposites can bend, yield, and come to an understanding if they do a little improvising, while respecting and trusting enough to pass the solo around.

A History of Violence

It's October..."so maybe I should pay attention to horror films." How cliché.

I have some planned and in the hopper, but I noticed "The Large Association of Movie Blogs" is showcasing director David Cronenberg, so I'm also going to be throwing in a bunch of Cronenberg reviews from the past and the retrospective present. After all, you can't have a Cronenberg movie without a little bit of horror...somewhere.

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005) Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) is an ordinary guy living a quiet life in Millbrook, Indiana. He's married to Edie (Maria Bello), a local attorney and they have two kids—Jack (Ashton Holmes) and Sarah (Heidi Hayes). Millbrook is small enough (population 3,246—but that will change) that everybody knows each other and are on a first name basis and everybody knows everybody's business. As they say in The Last Picture Show "you can't sneeze in this town without somebody offering you a handkerchief." 

Life is good for the Stall's. Edie is the big deal in town—local girl makes good—son Jack is on the baseball team for his high school and Tom contents himself with running the local diner, where there's always a hot pot of coffee and it's nearly as endless as the small talk and gossip. But, something will happen that will set the whole town talking and change the Stall's forever. 

One night, moments before closing, two toughs walk into the diner like they were out of "The Killers" or something. They are Leland Jones (Stephen McHattie) and "Billy" Orser (Greg Bryk) and Leland orders coffee, black for them both and Billy wants some lemon meringue pie. Tom lets them know that the diner is closed. But, Leland doesn't take the hint, his smile dropping. "I said...COFFEE!" he bellows, and Tom relents. "It's not very fresh," he says meekly. His waitress grabs a piece of pie and Tom tells her she can go home. But, that's not enough for Billy, who grabs her, throws her into a chair and fondles her. Tom is repulsed, and gets an expression on his face of uselessness.

Lester pulls out a gun and aims it at Tom, and, coffee pot in hand, he explains that they don't have much cash in the till. But the cook is still there and there's a couple of kids in a booth in the back—potential collateral damage. So, Tom takes action. He swings the hot coffee pot at Lester, hitting him in the face, shattering the glass, the follow-through knocking Lester's gun to the linoleum. Even before the force of the swing is over, Tom is over the counter, makes a grab for Lester's gun, while Lester pulls out a knife and stabs him through the foot, pinning him to the floor. Tom fires four shots, hitting Billy square in the chest, sending him flying through the front door. He then turns the gun on Lester and fires point-blank in the head.

It happens so fast, there's hardly time to react. But, Tom stares at the gun, sweating pouring off his face. It's over. But, it's only just begun.

A History of Violence comes from a Vertigo graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke, but Cronenberg was working from a script adaptation by Josh Olson, not knowing its source. As such, he has his own visual style, starting the film with a long four minute shot as Lester and Billy "check out" of a flea-bag motel without paying the bill. It tells the story of how violence begets violence and can affect everything in its bloody path.

The process begins when word of Tom's action in the diner gets around town. He's a big deal, people stopping him in the street and glad-handing. Good work, Tom. Business at the diner actually picks up (rather than discouraging customers because it's a crime-scene) and Tom down-plays what he's done. 

So, business picks up at the diner, which is good. And bad.

Not long after the diner incident, three guys in suits come in and confront Tom, especially the guy in charge, Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), who wears sunglasses, even inside, and has a particularly venomous way of calling Tom "Joey." Tom tries to deflect, but Fogarty will have none of it, pressing him, calling him "Joey" and reminding him of Philadelphia. Tom denies everything, but Fogarty isn't buying it, even if he does lay a hundred dollar bill on the counter to pay for his coffee. They leave, but they don't leave town, raising suspicions with Millbrook's sheriff who does some digging and reports to Tom that they're part of an Irish mob out of Philadelphia, led by one Richey Cusack.

Fogarty and company begin to stalk Tom and his family—following Edie and her daughter when they go to the mall (and leaving her with a taunting "ask him why he's so good at killing people"—and an inevitable confrontation takes place at the Stall house. Tom comes out to defend his family with a shotgun, but is persuaded to drop it when Fogarty reveals that he's got the boy, Jack, and implies harm to him unless Tom comes with them back to Philadelphia. Tom complies, but it's just a feint to attack the men, which leads to dire consequences for the family.

A History of Violence keeps you guessing about whether Tom really is a hit-man or this is just a case of mistaken identity, and Cronenberg ups the stakes with brutal depictions of violence not for the squeamish—he is, after all, the Master of Unease and the Viscera. But, he is also a director fascinated by obsession and the communicable. And there is more than a hint that he believes that violence is something that is passed on from example. One can see that in what's called the cycle of abuse where "normal" is fractured by example and passed on, like eye color or male-pattern baldness or a pre-disposition to disease.

But, is it a sickness or a learned behavior? Nature or Nurture? Does the stopping of the threat of violence by violence stop the violence or merely teaches it? Do the ends justify the means? Cronenberg doesn't provide answers, only examples, and keeps the unease palpable as one leaves the theater.

A Dangerous Method

It's October..."so maybe I should pay attention to horror films." How cliché.

I have some planned and in the hopper, but I noticed "The Large Association of Movie Blogs" is showcasing director David Cronenberg, so I'm also going to be throwing in a bunch of Cronenberg reviews from the past and the retrospective present. After all, you can't have a Cronenberg movie without a little bit of horror...somewhere.

Written at the time of the film's release.

Physician, Heal Thyself
or
"It's Hard, You Will Find, to be Narrow of Mind When You're Jung at Heart"

There's a lovely scene in Francis Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream, in which Tucker's accountant (played by Martin Landau) talks about how his mother "in the old country" warned him not to get too close to people or he'd catch their "dreams." "Years later," he says "I realized I misunderstood her. 'Germs', she said, not dreams, you'll catch their germs."

David Cronenberg's film of A Dangerous Method (adapted by Christopher Hampton from his play), a fictionalization of the relationship between psychiatric pioneers Signmund Freud, Carl Jung and Sabina Spielrein, might well have "don't get too close to people or you'll catch their dreams" as its tagline.  Starting out, Jung and Freud are two eminent theoretical psychiatrists, the former in Switzerland and the latter in Vienna. Spielrein is admitted to Jung's care, suffering from what appears to be schizophrenia, but he is convinced that Freud's "talking cure" (the name of Hampton's play) might lead to a break-through from her confusion and agitation.

Jung (Michael Fassbender) has it all going for him—in marked contrast to his troubled patients and his contemporaries in his field—married to a rich heiress, he works because he wants to, not because he has to. Humorless, cool and entirely self-absorbed and -satisfied, the treatment of Spielrein gives him a very real sense of accomplishment, as the woman's obvious intelligence allows her to improve from the agitated state she arrives in.*  His comradeship with Freud (Viggo Mortensen, his third film in a row with director Cronenberg) starts intellectually, evolves into an affectionate father-son mentorship, Freud sees him as an "heir" in the field of psychotherapy, and encourages his younger contemporary and his processes...up to a point—Freud cooly informs Jung, while he's is visiting the home of the elder, that, sure, he can espouse his sexual theories at the Freud family dinner table—after all, "they've heard worse."  But the air of chastisement is never far from Freud's sphere, like the smoke that hangs around his cigar.

Jung is a confident, if clueless, intellectual and emotionally remote (although he would use the word "dispassionate").  Things start to go downhill when Freud sends him "a problem" professor, Otto Gross (a nearly unrecognizable Vincent Cassel), a libertine without conscience or consequences, who starts to influence Jung to his way of thinking. The pressures of Gross' philosophy (such as it is) and Spielrein's needy attempts at seduction, compels him to begin, eventually, a twisted affair with his patient, the result of which leads to whispers of impropriety in psychiatric circles and creates a rift between him and Freud.

Jung reacts, not by questioning his own actions, but escalating his objections to Freud's obsession with sex as the root of human dysfunction,** and as good as he is at examining others, is incapable of realizing the deadening of his own emotions and darkening of his tone.  His own self-analysis becomes paralyzed in the conflicts of his own mind, and he's left confused, disillusioned and impotent to know how to bring himself out of it. The patient improves and becomes a more rounded human being, but the doctor...he succumbs.  

It recalls words the simple answer my brother used when I was contemplating psychotherapy: "But...psychiatrists are crazy!" 

And why wouldn't they be? In tending to our needs, they are just as likely to catch our dream and ensnare our nightmares...and be ensnared by them.  Everything is communicable.

And the stories of Spielrein, Jung and Freud, running parallel but opposite paths of mental health, exemplify the rising and falling fortunes, not of career and accomplishment, but of personal integrity. A Dangerous Method is a furthering of the film argument (which is found throughout the work of Kubrick and Welles, for instance) that intellect does not matter so much in a person's measure as character.

* A passing comment on Keira Knightley's performance, which is, initially, truly alarming, one of the great "crazy" acts since Helena Bonham Carter's Ophelia in Zefferelli's version of Hamlet, but then Knightley has never been afraid of a performance that will risk her beauty.  Here, she is vigorously spastic, mercurial, contorting her face into ape-like grimaces and flashes of madness, the eyes pin-wheeling around the room in search of...anything that might pull her out of her own head.  Yes, it's over-the-top, but compare it to the woman she becomes by the end—for the triad of performances and personalities in the film, her story is the focus, the lynch-pin around which the film revolves—very properly, as those early years of the "talk treatment" are dominated, probably unfairly, but historically accurately, by the reputations of the father-figures in the field.  Girls Not Allowed.

** This is certainly true in the portrayal of Freud here; if you ask Morgenson's Freud how many psychiatrists it would take to change a light-bulb (Answer: Just one, but it has to really want to change), he'd coolly appraise you, contemplate his cigar and ask aloud why you chose to not use the word "screw."  Avoidance, maybe?  Um...

Eastern Promises

It's October..."so maybe I should pay attention to horror films." How cliché.

I have some planned and in the hopper, but I noticed "The Large Association of Movie Blogs" is showcasing director David Cronenberg, so I'm also going to be throwing in a bunch of Cronenberg reviews from the past and the retrospective present. After all, you can't have a Cronenberg movie without a little bit of horror...somewhere.

Written at the time of the film's release.

Every Picture Tells a Story, Don't It?

Eastern Promises is the latest film by David Cronenberg, Master of the Uncomfortable, Enemy to the Squeamish. As with A History of Violence his star of choice is Viggo Mortenson, who after years of "body in a suit" roles where he barely registered, became a star with the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. His post-"Ring" choices have been interesting, including two films by Cronenberg where he could use his inscrutable demeanor to maximum advantage. His Nikolai--ostensibly "The Driver," but to others, "The Undertaker"--is a lieutenant in the Russian mob in contemporary London. His boss is Kirill (Vincent Cassel), the unreliable son of Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), owner of the Trans-Siberian supper club, and "King" of the mob. There are many facades in Eastern Promises, whether they're legitimate businesses that front prostitution, or the quaint grandfatherly demeanor that Semyon presents. *

Into this world of death comes mid-wife Anna (Naomi Watts) or "Anna Ivanovna" as Semyon, from the old country, calls her) who oversees the birth of a baby girl to a heroin addict who dies in childbirth. Trying to return the child to relatives, Anna takes the girl's diary to try and glean any information from it. As it's written in Russian, she turns to the Russian community for help. Her timing couldn't be worse as warring factions are busy slitting the throats of their enemies and it's a world where innocence can be completely subsumed in everyone's search for "a better life."

Cronenberg doesn't make "feel-good" movies, and all of his films take you places you don't want to go. Fans of Viggo Mortenson will see this film and be nicely rewarded with a finely layered, laid-back performance using an accent that approaches parody. But be warned: It's a violent flick with two graphic throat-cuttings, a scene where a dead man's fingers are snipped off to prevent identification, and in the major set-piece of the film, Mortenson's Nikolai is attacked in a bathhouse by two toughs with box-cutters. Yes, ladies (and gentlemen), you get to see his package, but the price you pay is sitting through one of the crunchiest, gristleiest, gooiest fights in a long, long time.

But that's the price you pay.

*The only truths are those tattooes charred into the bodies of the mobsters, from their days in the Russian work-camps—their lives, their stories are burned into their skin for all to see.

Psycho (1998)

Psycho (Gus Van Sant — after Alfred Hitchcock, 1998) What is good about Gus Van Sant's color version of the original can be laid at the feet of that film's creator, Alfred Hitchcock: the relentless pace, the choreography of the camera (matched by Van Sant and his cinematographer—the great Christopher Doyle), the various set-pieces that alternately tease and deepen the mystery manipulating the audience's needs and tensions "like an orchestra," and that the film maker breaks the director-audience "trust" by the film's mid-point.

Danny Elfman, Bernard Herrmann's No. 1 fan, lovingly recreates his score in stereo. And modern film techniques allow Van Sant to make that opening pan across Phoenix, Arizona (2:48 pm), seamlessly locate the apartment where Marion Crane (Anne Heche) and Sam Loomis (Viggo Mortensen) play out their melancholy nooner and then crawl (with no cuts) through the window.

       

 

 

 

Van Sant's semi-scrupulous recreation (right) of Hitchcock's original shot-plan (left).

Everything that's wrong with Psycho '98 can be blamed on Van Sant: the kitschy color schemes, the bizarre inserts (see below) and the casting. Vince Vaughn had his hands full having to follow in Anthony Perkins' sashaying foot-steps as Norman Bates, so kudos to him for even showing up on-set, although he's lousy. What's surprising is how poorly Anne Heche and Julianne Moore step in for Janet Leigh and Vera Miles, even though both seem to be working harder. And it's that way down the line, including—startlingly, Viggo Mortenson's poor standing next to John Gavin (??!) and Robert Forster's shrink monologue next to...Simon Oakland? Where there is parity (or is it parody, it's hard to say how much Van Sant is taking this seriously...did Hitchcock?) is William H. Macy's Detective Arbogast compared to Martin Balsam's original, and Philip Baker Hall for John McIntire

   

  

  

So, why even do it? Van Sant, in his commentary, cites several reasons: today's generation of movie-goers don't know from Psycho...or Hitchcock, making this a sort of a remedial version—Hitchcock for Dummies; some movie-goers don't like black and white films, hence the move to color; changes in movie technology allow the sorts of things that Hitchcock wanted to achieve technically with Psycho but could not (and the ratings system allows for a post-censor version—lines cut by Hitchcock are re-inserted, and there is a bit more blood-and-gore); and, the most compelling reason for Van Sant—nobody'd ever done it before—at least as scrupulously. He basically follows Hitchcock's story-boards (and carried a portable DVD player with the film for reference while shooting on-set), so it is mostly a matter of interpretation, which is not that radical a concept. After all, how many different interpretations of "Hamlet" have there been? And as Hollywood seems to be running out of ideas (or continues its policy of playing it safe) we've seen remakes, re-boots and re-imaginings of Planet of the Apes, True Grit, Solaris, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, any book by Jane Austen or the Brontë sisters, and we've seen movie versions of teleplays, such as Traffic, State of Play, Edge of Darkness, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy (and one can't forget "Americanized" versions of foreign films Is this necessarily a bad thing?  No. The Maltese Falcon had been filmed twice before when John Huston made his classic version in 1941. It is interesting that Van Sant not only remade Psycho, but also made it in Hitchcock's style using his shooting plan, acknowledging that the movie and the man who made it are inseparable.

What's different?  Van Sant follows Hitchcock's ideas pretty well...but does a sort of skewed version of them in terms of color, angle and performance. Some scenes have a more modern spin on then—for example, Lila and Sam wait for word from Arbogast (Martin Balsam in Hitchcock's version, William Macy in Van Sant's) at Sam's business, a hardware store in the 1960 version, but a flea-market in 1998, notice Sam reading the liner notes on a Judy Garland record.

In 1960, while investigating the Bates house, Lila finds children's books in Norman's room, but in 1998, it's porn.

And Mrs. Bates is found sitting in the dull basement, but in 1998, she's seen sitting in front of a diorama among live birds.

 

The biggest difference has a more feminist slant: rather than sitting back and watching the final fight, 1998's Lila takes part kicking her assailant.

But, Van Sant's entirely new additions are, frankly, unnecessary.  Sure, the first shot of the fly might have suggestions of bringing things full-circle, but the other shots—quick cut-aways (no pun intended—??) during the murders are merely distractions taking us out of "the moment" of the victims' deaths, and seem pretty frivolous.  Hitchcock does establish a "mind's eye" kind of cinema with his "voices in my head" sound overlays, and his "see that I look"/"see what I look at"/"see my reaction to it" style of silent story-telling might allow it, but it seems superfluous, and more than that, confusing, especially when we're having a shocking thing happening on-screen.

During the opening scene in the hotel room, an image of a fly on a half-eaten sandwich is inserted, paralleling the lucky fly who won't be killed in the prison cell at the end of the film.

During the first murder, a shot of a dilating pupil (presumably in the victim's eye) and a quickly moving storm-scape which presumably was witnessed previously.  

The second murder victim's flash-frames are (given that person's profession) a sleazy vice scene...

...As well as a stray cow in the middle of a road (A memory?  A potential victim?)

As well as a quick, obfuscating shot of the murderer approaching.

So...the Van Sant version of Psycho is an interesting experiment, Hitchock through the sensibilities of Van Sant, respectful but different. Does it do harm to the original? 

Well, no. Interesting story: the pulp novelist James M. Cain was told once by a person "too bad what Hollywood has done to your books," and Cain took them into his library and pointed to his own novels. "Hollywood hasn't done anything to my books. They're right there on the shelf." 

The original—Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho—will always be there.

Cameo's: Hitchcock on the left (1960) and a portly Hitchcock stand-in points at Gus Van Sant (1998).

The final card of Van Sant's Psycho—taking us beyond Hitchcock's raising of a car from the bog for a bit of perspective: all that horror has gone on just off the highway.  The distant traffic sails by, indifferent and unsuspecting of what lies out of their attention.  There's an element of that in all of Van Sant's movies—horror and secret lives occur just out of sight of normalcy.

*  In-joke (there are lots) here: The sign on The Bates Motel says "newly renovated" (a cutting remark)