For the most part Sacha Gervasi‘s Hitchcock, which opened the 2012 AFI Fest tonight, exudes a dry, whimsical tone that echoes Alfred Hitchcock‘s droll TV-host personality. And a feeling of scrupulous composition. But this is not about the making of Psycho as much as a love story about Hitch (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife and creative partner of 40 years, Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) and a crisis of fidelity that arose, the film says, during filming. The Hitchcock team decided, in short, to go for emotion, obsession and the facing of demons.
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Hitchcock director Sacha Gervasi during Roosevelt Hotel after-party.
I respect and admire the decision to not make this a nuts-and-bolts “how it was made” film — it’s ballsy and depthy. And talky and often indoorsy and shadowy and MCU-ish. Which also fits the pre-Kennedy period and the climate and the older-marrieds-going-through-a-rough-patch narrative. It’s all of a piece.
Except it’s 1:30 am and I just feel too whipped to write a review, but I’ll expand tomorrow morning. In the meantime here are some post-screening tweets.
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