When “Gus Van Sant's" Psycho first came out, none of the critics had any idea how to respond to it. The film was a shot-by-shot remake of the Hitchcock film, which most critics and audiences loved, and so you understand that with a few minor variations, the dialogue, situations, camera angles and music are all the same as in the original. A lot of critics hated the remake. Some found it interesting, but wouldn't really argue in favor of it. Essentially they found that it was gratuitous and totally unnecessary, as well as predictable (duh) and unable to reach viewers the way that the original had.

In the midst of all of the backlash and confusion, I walked out of the theater, went online, and raved on a message board that Gus Van Sant's remake was brilliant. A "four star" movie, and better than Hitchcock's original. My credibility may have gone out of the window at that point, and my admiration of the film became a running joke among the board regulars. Did I really think that the film was better than the original? In a way I think that I did. The original has really sort of grown on me since then, and I do find myself really wanting to own the DVD. But at the time I was really thinking that arguing in favor of the new Psycho was a more interesting position to take than bashing it. When you decide to share your taste in film with other people, you need to understand that it's your identity that you are sharing. One doesn't choose to like or hate a film any more than they choose to fall in love or believe in a god. But still, you have to ask yourself if liking or hating this film really represents your identity and orientation. And so no, I do not deify Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. And I refuse to vilify Gus Van Sant's remake. I do not believe that the experience of the former is invaluable, while the experience of the latter is worthless. I think, ultimately, that both films are masterpieces. Yes, reader, I feel like spreading the love. If my five-star review of this film generates more controversy and hits than my one-star review of The English Patient, which I think and I hope it will, I will have felt like I have done my job.

Appreciating Gus Van Sant's Psycho is easy. Simply regard the Hitchcock film as the "original" possessing all the primary qualities that make that film what it is. Namely, an experience that we find attractive. Then simply regard Van Sant's film as the "remake,” building upon, ripping off, and ripping on all the qualities that we found in the original. It's folly I think to watch Psycho ‘98 without being familiar with the original film, and recognizing that this is a remake. I suppose that you could then argue that the Hitchcock film is superior to the remake as it can exist alone, but that strikes me as a juvenile and simplistic way to view the film. Now imagine a viewer who says that Psycho is one of their five favorite films, that as they are heterosexual or homosexual, theist or atheist, American or not (heh heh) or, you know, any of these fairly primitive but legitimate ways that we all form our identity and selves, they can say, "Psycho is one of my all time favorite movies.”

There are a few things about the original film that any such person must internalize, justify and be fully able to grasp. They are not necessarily flaws in the film, but they can quite potentially be identified as such. The first such moment that I want to discuss is the scene where Norman Bates goes to his mother and she chews him out for having a woman over. Marion Crane overhears the voices. We later find out that Norman's mother is dead. So where does the voice come from? We can justify pretty much all the other instances where we hear mother's voice as existing in Norman's mind, but of course a voice that exists in Norman's mind cannot be listenable by Marion Crane. Could Norman be talking out loud in a "mother side"? Possibly, but it doesn't sound plausible that he could talk in that exact pitch. I can't imagine that schizophrenics or people with multiple personality disorders focus too much on making sure that they sound like completely different people. In which case, couldn't Marion figure out that Norman and mother were the same people? And even if we can explain that phenomenon, can she really be able to hear them from all the way over at the Norman Bates house? Mother doesn't get very good dialogue either. Check out: "I will not talk about disgusting things because they disgust me. Do you understand, boy?!" or how about her complaining to Norman when he carries her down to the fruit cellar, "You think me fruity, eh?!" There are some effective lines elsewhere in the film, and it's difficult for me to objectively argue the quality of dialogue. But it seems to me that it is absolutely unjustifiable to argue that Psycho is a legitimate and serious horror film about mental illness while it includes dialogue like that and a glaring logical error like that. Julien Donkey-Boy it ain't.

Which is why we must then conclude that Psycho is not a legitimate and serious horror film about mental illness. I don't think that this error or this dialogue is unintentional; I really do believe that Hitchcock had an idea about the effect that he wanted to create. But even if it is intended seriously, we can and I think must argue that Psycho's virtues (a significant portion anyway) exist with its tongue firmly planted in its cheek. That's probably not news to anyone; Hitchcock's humor has always been an identifying part of his auteurship. But it's important to establish early on as we identify how Van Sant's film can be of worth. Psycho is and has been a bit of a put-on.

Related to that is, again, that Psycho ain't Julien Donkey-Boy, in that the latter was whittled down from hours and hours of frequently improvised footage and doesn't even have a plot. That film's director, Harmony Korine, is more interested in leaving impressions, he isn't interested in plots! I believe he's one of those "Real life doesn't have plots" sorts of people. Well, Psycho has a plot. A humdinger, it has two surprise twists. And it was heavily storyboarded. Hitchcock said in an interview, "You can't walk on the set, or you can if you want to, but for my money, I'd prefer to write all of these things down in the same way that a composer writes down those little black dots from where we get beautiful sound." And so Hitchcock's movie is not a slice from the life of a crazy person. You can say Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer it ain't. Psycho is a completely constructed work. To the degree that it's about anything resembling our real lives (which I'll assure you, I think it does), it's an abstraction. We are looking at a painting, not a photograph. A painting, again, with its tongue planted in its cheek.

Psycho was an inexpensive movie, but it was lean. Hitchcock's camera was devious and omnipotent. My favorite shot in the film is the one after the famed drain sequence where, after circling Marion Crane's dead eternally staring eye, we make a beeline towards the money. It's perhaps one of the greatest "fuck you"s that I have ever seen. All this fury, chaos and horror, and Hitchcock just jerks us out to show us something else. Horror filmmakers only dream of being this dehumanizing. This is all Psycho's aesthetic; this is all part of its identity.

Now imagine a filmmaker using all the same shots, but filming it in color, with name actors and flavors of the day in place of many lesser-name actors who were there just to provide exposition and a model for the camera. For example, Marion Crane's sister, Lila, is played by Julianne Moore in the remake. In the original, she was played by Vera Miles. Miles has a respectful enough filmography, but she didn't have much to do in the original. There was no character there. She was there only to provide exposition and be a model for all the shots. Moore curiously plays it like she's the star of the movie. She's stronger and somehow more exuberant. Where Miles was dainty, Moore has a feminist slant. Even more offensive is putting Vince Vaughn, who is lankly and badly overacts in place of Anthony Perkins. The original casting worked better for the movie. Again, Psycho is a lean movie, that is part of its identity. But the point of the stunt casting is to call attention to how gratuitous it all is. And that color is so garish and similarly gratuitous. Gus Van Sant likes his greens and oranges. It's like a neon photocopy of Psycho lacking in anything resembling good taste. Speaking of lacking in anything resembling good taste, how can you do anything but howl at that infamous new scene where Master Bates pulls his signature move while scoping out Anne Heche's B-cups?

But that approach makes a perfect sense, for no other film than Psycho. The Van Sant film is everything that the original film is. It's very funny and really quite creepy, and you're getting high on pure cinema. But instead of being lean, Van Sant has made it excessive and indulgent. He's made a fag musical version of Psycho. It's Norman Bates on Broadway. I think it's intentional. Van Sant understood that the very idea of a Psycho remake is excessive and indulgent, and so he has incorporated this into the very fabric of the film and decided that he'd make the very best and the very worst film that he possibly could. The original Psycho is of course a film made in extremely poor taste. It mixes schizophrenia and incest with transvestism while simultaneously sanitizing and popularizing the Ed Gein murders in which it was based on. We realized how trashy this all was when we saw Brian De Palma's Psycho remake of sorts, Dressed to Kill, but Gus Van Sant's film is able to have us recognize the trashiness of the source along with its operatic pretensions. Van Sant's film doesn't build to anything, like the original film does. We don't really care like we do with the original picture. It's all money shot and no foreplay, as they say in the business. That, again, would probably not work with any other film than Psycho. Van Sant has dissected Hitchcock's roller coaster ride and shown us the machinery. As we are outside of the experience of Psycho, we acknowledge that the thrills we experienced were arbitrary and artificial, ultimately a sort of meaningless experience that began and will die outside of the movie theater. Psycho is probably more L.H.O.O.Q. than Mona Lisa: 1963, although it certainly has elements of both. It's a Dadaist vulgarity that has no other purpose but to be a vulgarity. Its meaning is its own meaninglessness.

The original sociological value, the theme and stuff, of the original Psycho probably comes from its misogyny. Women are often the central characters in Hitchcock's films, and the Oxygen network plays his movies a lot. But that sure as hell doesn't mean that they don't come off poorly in these films. If Alfred Hitchcock hated women, however, he was at least far far from above joking about it in his movies. Psycho is a movie about birds. As we know from the Austin Powers movies, a bird is a British slang term for a girl. In Psycho there are lots of references to the birds with feathers, indirectly meaning the birds with skirts. Norman Bates stuffs birds and keeps them in the lobby. At one point, in speaking of his sick mother, he says that people "cluck their tongues.” His mother is as harmless as one of those stuffed birds, he says. Marion Crane's last name reduces her to a bird. Norman Bates says that she eats like a bird. After mother finishing murdering Crane, Norman cleans up the scene. He turns around at one point and knocks over a picture of a bird, which he promptly places back on the wall.

At this point the symbolism is both of mother and Crane. The picture "attacks" Norman the way that Norman was attacked by Crane, through her (unintentional) seduction of him and urging him to betray and destroy his mother. She is put back where she belongs, however. Similarly the picture is unleashed the way that mother was, with Norman putting her back to safety. In both instances a bird is unleashed and put back. In the first the attack is unjustified and the cleanup vengeful. In the latter, the attack is justified, and the clean-up caring. Women have of course created Norman Bates. He would not be the way that he is if were not for his mother and the various women that create lust in him. Watching Psycho I am reminded of a dream that I read about in a book about dreams. The dreamer was assaulted by a man, but his impotence prevented him from going on with the rape. He began to cry and she felt sorry for him. She comforted him and ended up making love to him. Women are capable of compassion here, because they possess all the power. It's a luxury stemming from their lack of suffering.

Psycho probably would have been a dull film if were to only follow Marion Crane. Janet Leigh in the original is quite restrained, and certainly doesn't feel as natural as Anthony Perkins. We know that she's going to be okay and she has the choice to commit sin or not. Norman Bates doesn't. Crane exists in a world that Norman can never really penetrate. He's by far the most complex character in the film and by far the most sympathetic. Psycho is precursor to the slasher films in that sense, where we hate the protagonists and cheer them on being gutted like fish. This is the heart of Psycho, this is what makes it "human" and stands out other than just a movie.

In the remake Gus Van Sant casts Anne Heche to play Marion Crane. Whereas Moore and Vaughn are awful and exist as distractions only for the sake of being distractions, casting Heche as Crane is inspired. First of all, she looks like a bird. She has the hook nose and the huge saucer eyes. She looks like an owl. Second of all, she is a known lesbian! Well, actually she's bisexual (I feel really strange knowing about and talking about somebody's sexual preferences this way), but in 1998 she acted in Return to Paradise and Six Days and Seven Nights and everybody couldn't believe it because she was a lesbian and she was performing love scenes with men. The casting raises the admittedly corny bird symbolism to even more ridiculous levels. And our disbelief effectively eliminates the sexual tension between Crane and Bates (and the other men in the film), making it so that the film doesn't work on a personal level. We are again only able to recognize her presence for the degree of spectacle that it provides the film. Without the sexual tension, the flirting that men do with Crane throughout the film feels arbitrary and surreally nonsensical. This Crane is a strange thing to kill and lust for. And a strange thing to rescue.

Once that we are able to look at this behavior without being involved in it, we realize that it feels sort of strange that she is given this much psychic weight, no matter what she looks like. By removing the substantial heart of Psycho, the whole thing is reduced to something much crueler and even more "art for art's sake.” That may be what this remake is all about. Where Psycho is essentially just a small movie about a serial killer, the remake is about the forty years of people watching this small movie about a serial killer. Photographic impressions of people have replaced people themselves. The killings end up being all about effect and nothing about motivation, sociology or psychology. Gus Van Sant's Psycho is about how we have all been movied-out, and sort of even corrupted.

I must admit that this film is every bit the anti-movie as Moulin Rouge!, and you can't take any of it at all sincerely, but I find it smarter and perversely more satisfying. Perhaps it's more subtle in its vulgarity, or maybe it's just more upfront. We know that it's a remake going in. The scope is narrower also; instead of taking all of our culture, it focuses only on one film and we can go on from there.

In defending it, I think it may even be said that the more deeply you feel Psycho, the more you can appreciate this movie. Or the more you can be outraged by it, and thus be interested in it. The various rip-offs and attacks on the Mona Lisa have not destroyed the original's appeal to me. In fact I think that they may have even warmed me over to it. The painting has become not just a "work of art" but a part of our popular cheap culture, which of course we hold more intimately than a "work of art.” And I know she isn't going to change. She'll remain just the way she is, with her own sort of perfection. Whenever I look at the Mona Lisa I smile back at her. It's not looking down at me and I'm not looking down on her. The subculture of art that she has spawned has taken nothing away. It's only given her more. It's about time that we look at Psycho in the same way.