The final ep. of BM made for interesting viewing so soon after Feud's finale: the predominant tone in both was crushing sadness with the only relief from that being a final fantasy of forgiveness and second chances (and some super-on-the-nose sountrack choices). Norman's final fantasy is simple wishful thinking, direct and unalloyed with his inner mother persona.
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It is interesting how, in one's lifetime of watching entertainment, certain intersections occur that seem almost preordained -- in a small and satisfying way rather than anything too profound, but its there. Hence, Feud and the final season of Bates Motel, with Psycho and 1960 and 1962 and Baby Jane as "anchors" to 2017 "takes" on our movie past using 2017 actors.
That both finales had sadness and tragedy at their core(far more "fatal" in the fictional Bates Motel) and a restorative dream-fantasy at their end, well...nifty.
And yet...I come here not to praise Bates Motel...well, not MUCH.
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Thrills as such were notably absent even to the point of implausibility: we're asked to believe that the police wouldn't be keeping a close eye on the Bates Motel and House while Norman and Romero are still on the loose thereby removing the last chance for anything thrilling.
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We didn't get a staircase murder climax, either. Perhaps the high shot and process fall were too much for the show's episodic budget(the shower murder had been "truncated," too.) Perhaps that fall down the stairs is just considered too hokey for modern times(its not so much the process screen as how the actor has to be positioned in front of it to fake the fall.)
Anyway, no staircase scene. No shockeroo finale.
I'm reminded that, at the climax of Hitchcock's Psycho, with Sam questioning Norman at the motel office desk, Norman barely talks , and his asides are interesting but minimal:
"This place? This place happens to be my only world. I grew up in that house up there. I had a very happy childhood. My mother and I were MORE than happy."
And that's it. That's all Hitchcock allows Norman to say about life with Mother. To Sam at least. For by then in Psycho, the shock machine has been revved up to peak suspense and within minutes, the audience will be screaming its lungs out and shaking the theater walls during the fruit cellar climax, so much that they keep screaming and you can't hear the psychiatrist talking in the next scene, for awhile.
Psycho as a 1960 movie(and as a full-house 1979 college showing, where I saw it this way) was a "scream machine," with plenty of cinema and plenty of hidden depth, but a spare, tight, withholding quality overall. "Playing the audience like an organ" was Hitchcock's goal. Getting them to cower in suspense and release with screams was his achievement.
There are no screams in Bates Motel -- no classic screeching violins during the murders by the greatest film musical composer of all time. And Norman CAN'T STOP TALKING about his Mother. And we CAN"T STOP SEEING HER talking to him. On and on and on, it goes, two great mysterious characters of 1960 drained of all mystery in 2017. Norma starts and ends the show as a fairly young woman; the romance with Norman always has a sexual tinge to go with her motherly control of him. Bates Motel is, indeed, a love story. And thus not really anything to do with Psycho at all. And that's OK...as far as it goes.
The showrunners told us, time and time again, that they saw Psycho as only a road map and were COMPELLED not to follow its road too closely. "We drove past the off-ramp of Norman ending up in jail" said showrunner Carlton Cuse of the finale..."we had Alex make him go to Norma's body so we could end the show at the house."
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By about half way trough the ep. it was clear that Dylan would have to mercy-kill Norman much as Universal were-wolf- and other monster-hunters sometimes has to mercifully kill their quarries.
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I will concede some profundity there....Bates Motel thus matches up with some other, different horror stories. But I couldn't help feeling we were several levels down from the true profundity of Norman in the cell at the end of the film, and Perkins' unforgettably terrifying final leer(which Highmore attempted a few times in Season Five, to minimal effect.)
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
It occurs to me that much of Season 5 of BM could be understood as expanding on Stefano's description of Lila Crane weeping for all the destroyed human beings of this world, which Hitchcock ignored.
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Yes. Hitchcock in his quest to "keep the terror going" ruthlessly threw out a lot of heart and soul from the Psycho script, notably the talk between Sam and Lila en route to the Bates Motel, and notably Lila crying in the DA's office. "Bates Motel" elected to emphasize all that sort of thing, to the point where oftimes the show forgot its terror responsibilities.
On the other hand, Hitchcock KEPT the emotion of the Norman/Marion parlor scene, and played nasty with it by killing Marion off minutes later. His sensibilities were mixed.
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The grinding tragedy of it all worked pretty well. Alternatives such as Mother-taking-over-Norman-one-last-time and slasher-stalking Madeline Loomis, Sheriff Green and maybe Dylan too were too perhaps too silly to contemplate.
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I guess. We seemed to get some pedestrian plotting , though. No cops staking out the house at the finale? Alex turning his back on Norman for so long that it was INEVITABLE that Norman could turn the tables and kill him? I've seen that movie before. Or rather, that TV show.
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Great work from Freddie Highmore having to depict a more naked but still deluded Norman.
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I recall Hitchcock telling Kim Novak(on Vertigo) that if she made too many facial expressions, it was like "scribbling a mass of lines on a piece of paper." He directed her to do less. Anthony Perkins did less, too. Highmore was interesting in his various tics and stares and leers(so clearly "Norma wearing Norman's face" a lot of the time) but...I dunno. He's not Anthony Perkins. Sometimes lightning only strikes once with a particular role. Neither his mewling voice nor his too geeky face quite sold Norman with the allure that Perkins gave it(in 1960 ONLY, I might add. Anthony Perkins himself couldn't live up to Anthony Perkins under Hitchcock's direction in 1960.)
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What did everyone else think?
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I've read a flurry of internet reviews of the finale, from respected sources(like Onion AV club) and they're all giving the show an A, A-, or B+. The showrunners here seem to have delivered the best of the Psycho offshoots and I can only be so curmudgeonly against that.
I am thinking how the show used Doris Day's "Que Sera Sera" near the end of the finale. What a DIRECT Hitchcock reference! And perhaps only 5% of us watching Bates Motel "got it." And perhaps we aren't the REAL audience for Bates Motel.
But we are here. And we DO hold Psycho rather dear. And it WAS something entirely different than Bates Motel. Certainly as a shocker but also -- and this is important -- as a HITCHCOCK film.
Consider the "California Charlie" scene and Hitchcock's trademark control of everything: the shot of the cop and the car across the street, Charlie and Marion walking as she looks back at the cop and Charlie looks too; the camera crusing all the cars as Marion walks and thinks about her purchase; Marion entering the bathroom and counting out all the cash in close-up; the perfectly spaced three men(Charlie, cop, mechanic) watching Marion drive away. All as Bernard Herrmann's jittery "theme for Marion's drive" kicks in.
There is NOTHING of that distinctive cinematic technique in "Bates Motel." Not a trace of Hitchcock's style in it, outside of the homage shots of Norman's eye at the peephole or the camera swing under his chin. "Bates Motel" probably owes more to the original Bloch novel(where Mother WAS a "living character" in Norman's mind) than to Hitchcock.
I leave "Bates Motel" as I came to it -- with no feeling for it at all emotionally, and a certain pride that "my personal favorite movie" is still making noise 60 years later(almost.)
PS. Versus the original, the remake, and all the sequels, this is the only version of the Norman Bates story where he actually dies. I don't think that's a good thing.
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
One sidebar on Bates Motel, serial killers, and Hitchcock:
Near the end, Dylan tells Norman "You're sick, you need help."
This is what Guy Haines kept telling Bruno Anthony all through Strangers on a Train. Its also what Dylan tells the not-having-it female sheriff in Bates Motel: Norman's sick, he needs help. Help him. To which the sheriff replies: hey, it looks like he brutally killed three people(and, we know: more.) I don't care.
Norman responds to Dylan's plea ("You're sick, you need help") directly: "You want me locked up in a prison for the criminally insane, and drugged up?"
Because truly, that's what "help" is for serial killers who have committed horrible murders.
Think of Bob Rusk in Frenzy. The one killer that Hitchcock showed us "in full" -- sadistic, cruel, out for the pleasure of rape and domination, and of terrorizing and then slowly strangling his female victims. Rusk is sick. He needs help. But after watching what he does to Brenda Blaney...just how much help do we want to give him? Isn't punishment more on the menu?
Its been ever thus in the "real world" of killers judged insane by the courts. Somehow they are separated out from the "sane" killers who run with youth gangs or the Mafia or bank robbery teams. To want to "kill for the pleasure of killing" is such a mad condition that we shifted to treating it as a "problem."
Kudos to Bates Motel for taking on this question a bit directly in Dylan's dialogue with Norman at the end.
True story in the recent news: a man went mad on a bus a few years ago and randomly decapitated the passenger sitting in front of him. He was ruled insane and, moreover, "off his meds at the time." Well, a few weeks ago, this killer was released from the mental institution because he has been judged "sane" and will return to taking his meds.
I read this.
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Popcorn Kernel (2368)
8 years ago
Well he also died in the Bates Motel movie which was a kind of sequel. But it's not contiguous with the other sequels, it's kind of an alternate timeline sequel where Norman was in the asylum the whole time since the 1960 movie.
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Well he also died in the Bates Motel movie which was a kind of sequel.
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Ya got me! That's RIGHT. I think I had blocked "Bates Motel"(1987) out of my mind -- now THAT was bad. But it opens with a barely seen Anthony Perkins double(in a photograph) and we learn that Norman died of natural causes at the institution, and willed the Bates properties to...Bud Cort, a fellow inmate who is released.
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But it's not contiguous with the other sequels, it's kind of an alternate timeline sequel where Norman was in the asylum the whole time since the 1960 movie.
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Interestingly enough, that's what Joseph Stefano said about his script for Psycho IV: The Beginning. He wrote it as if Psychos II and III never happened...Norman was simply released to the care of, and marriage to, his psychiatric nurse.
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I suppose these are ALL "alternative universes." My point, of course, is that this is the first one that ends with Norman's death as the climax, the solution to the story. Norman's saying "thank you" to the brother who has shot him was certainly poignant. It just didn't feel like Psycho...
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Popcorn Kernel (2368)
8 years ago
In the Bates Motel movie, I kept wondering how was he paying the property tax on the motel for all those years. How would he even still own the property after 20 years of zero income.
That movie was so bad. The last half hour was almost like it got a reel mixed up with another movie, and we got the suicide ghost sock hop storyline which seemed like a pointless distraction and had nothing to do with Bud Cort's story.
And then the silly Scooby Doo style ending. It was just the banker trying to scare him away. So cheesy. Did anyone even get killed in Bates Motel? (I forget)
Of the sequels, 2 and 3 are the best IMO and 4 is awful. So it's funny to me that the writer of 4 wants to pretend that 2 and 3 never happened.
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
In the Bates Motel movie, I kept wondering how was he paying the property tax on the motel for all those years. How would he even still own the property after 20 years of zero income.
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A fair question. Perhaps state ownership of the properties? And there may have been inheritance money(from MR Bates) to pay for such things. If the house and motel were owned clear...it would just be the taxes.
Also...this was just a TV pilot. Not much thought given, I suppose.
The ONLY idea I liked about Bates Motel 1987 was that Fairvale had "grown out the 15 miles" and now surrounded the fenced-off motel and house with a commercial district and graffiti on the walls.
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That movie was so bad. The last half hour was almost like it got a reel mixed up with another movie, and we got the suicide ghost sock hop storyline which seemed like a pointless distraction and had nothing to do with Bud Cort's story.
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This was a pilot, and the idea was for a Fantasy Island/Love Boat type show where each week Cort and the motel would host "guest stars in occult storylines." Didn't make it past pilot.
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And then the silly Scooby Doo style ending. It was just the banker trying to scare him away. So cheesy. Did anyone even get killed in Bates Motel? (I forget)
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I don't think anybody got killed. This was "Psycho for 6 year olds" and proof positive that the "Bates Motel" of today's frank cable world is a lot better than the TV show that got its name on NBC in the 80's.
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Of the sequels, 2 and 3 are the best IMO and 4 is awful. So it's funny to me that the writer of 4 wants to pretend that 2 and 3 never happened.
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Funnier still: the screenwriter of Psycho 4 wrote the ORIGINAL. Joseph Stefano. But that time, he had Alfred Hitchcock as his mentor, Robert Bloch's great novel(of its well-plotted type) as his source, and he was 30 years younger. I felt that SOME of Psycho 4 felt like the original. Psycho 3 is the best of sequels IMHO. But nothing touches the 1960 film AS a film, as cinema, as showmanship, or as history.
Not even the new "Bates Motel."
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swanstep (2715)
8 years ago
We didn't get a staircase murder climax, either. Perhaps the high shot and process fall were too much for the show's episodic budget
Probably not a budget problem, after all the show finale *did* give us a reprise of Psycho's second high, 'from above' shot. Only this time rather than carry mother across the landing and down the stairs to the basement to avoid detection, Norman now carries (frozen) Norma across the landing and down the stairs to the dining room to put on a show for Dylan and (depending on how far you think Norman is looking ahead) sealing the deal on his own suicide-by-brother.
Probably not a camera or process shot problem - all of that stuff is *so* much easier to do with today's small cameras and digital compositing and set-extension techniques than when Hitch had to do it. Note that the second 'high shot' in Psycho is the final segment of Psycho's biggest show-off shot: the camera glides up the stairs ear-peeking on Norman and mother then takes off up to the ceiling and then reverses around to be in place to peer down on Norman carrying mother to the basement. This was a near impossible shot to accomplish with 1960's huge cameras and before late '70s innovations like Louma cranes and steadicam rigs. You had to be a madman like Hitch or Welles or Ophuls to even *think* of trying such a shot back then and then committing to the days of effort to get something like that to work.
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ecarle (14979)
8 years ago
Probably not a budget problem, after all the show finale *did* give us a reprise of Psycho's second high, 'from above' shot.
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True. That was the last of the direct references to the original, and one felt the pleasurable jolt. One commenter calls moments like this shot "the Psycho nerd nerdgasms." Guilty as charged.
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Only this time rather than carry mother across the landing and down the stairs to the basement to avoid detection, Norman now carries (frozen) Norma across the landing and down the stairs to the dining room to put on a show for Dylan and (depending on how far you think Norman is looking ahead) sealing the deal on his own suicide-by-brother.
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I wonder if Norman WAS looking that far ahead, or instead hoping for some weird family reunion. It was interesting how he tended to the hot stove and one COULD feel the positive vibes of "a family dinner almost ready to serve." And then Dylan sees his dead Mother(becoming rather a more gruesome version of The Trouble with Harry) and, quite understandably, vomits.
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Probably not a camera or process shot problem - all of that stuff is *so* much easier to do with today's small cameras and digital compositing and set-extension techniques than when Hitch had to do it. ... You had to be a madman like Hitch or Welles or Ophuls to even *think* of trying such a shot back then and then committing to the days of effort to get something like that to work.
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I've said this often about Hitchcock...that the shots and camera movements he maneuvered were incredible acts of cinematic prowess in their time...ONE of the entire reasons his movies existed and were loved...but today, superior lightweight technology, CGI and Silicon Valley can do anything...the director is no longer really expected to be the kind of "magician" that Hitchcock and the others were(or as Truffaut called Hitchcock, " the ultimate athlete of cinema," a funny monicker given Hitchcock's sedentary ways.
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Well, maybe there just wasn't a way to fit the staircase murder(let alone that great twisty second shot) in. "Bates Motel," as with other TV knockoffs of movies, is more interested in words than shots, and uses basic set-ups, and stresses"character development," etc..
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