SPOILER ALERT – Do not read the blog post if you don’t want to know the story.
American Psycho is a movie directed by Mary Harron in 2000, it is adapted from Bret Easton Ellis’ novel published in 1991. The role of Patrick Bateman is played by Christian Bale.
American Psycho tells the story of Patrick Bateman, a brilliant 27-year-old Wall Street wealth management consultant who worked at Pierce & Pierce in the late 1980’s. His appearance is very important for Bateman. Handsome, rich and intelligent, he takes care of his body, goes to the best restaurants and clubs in town, goes to trendy nightclubs and occasionally sniffs a line of coke, he’s a perfect yuppie.
However, Patrick Bateman’s perfect life hides another sordid reality: that of a psychopath (= personality disorder, characterized by antisocial behavior, lack of remorse and a lack of human behavior). Bateman often expresses doubts about his own sanity and is regularly subject to psychotic episodes, during which he hallucinates and often feels a sense of depersonalization. During these psychotic episodes, Bateman becomes a serial killer. Moreover he has agenda where he plans and expresses all his fantasies (especially through drawings), it is for him a way to channel his pulsions but to draw the killings is not enough.
However, Bateman does not fit the typical profile of a serial killer: he kills more or less indiscriminately, without preferring one type of victim and without a coherent modus operandi. Throughout the film, he kills men, women, a child, and animals. He kills women mainly for sadistic sexual pleasure, often during or immediately after sex, and is also a frequent rapist.
He actually feels as much disgust for himself as he does for others. Furthermore he kills a lot of his victims because they make him feel incompetent or at least less competent than them (for instance when he kills one of his colleagues, Paul Owen, just out of jealousy).
The scale of his actions is increasing and the killings are becoming increasingly sadistic and complex, moving from a simple assault to a long string of rape, torture, mutilation, cannibalism and necrophilia. In his informal conversations with his friends, he inserts stories about serial killers. On several occasions, he openly confesses his murderous activities to his co-workers who however never take him seriously, not hearing what he says or not fully understanding it.
Bateman’s psychopathic acts ultimately result in a shootout in which he kills several random people on the street, resulting in a SWAT team being dispatched by helicopter. After the shooting, Bateman runs away on foot and hides in his office where he calls his lawyer, Harold Carnes, and confesses all his crimes on his answering machine. The latter don’t even believing him, having eaten with Paul Owen the week before.
Later, Bateman returns to Paul Owen’s apartment, which he had taken as a crime scene, where he had previously killed and severely mutilated a prostitute and a other women. But when he enters the apartment, it is perfectly clean and refurbished. He meets the real estate agent who sees his surgical mask. The real estate agent tells him to leave and never come back.
The film ends as it started, showing Bateman and his colleagues at a new club on a Friday night, striking up a mundane conversation. However, a typographical sign is seen at the end, where we can read “This is not an exit”, we can see it as a kind of metaphor for his condition of which he feels a prisoner.
Review:
The film, told in the first person, accumulates more and more hallucinations, inconsistencies, passages of pure delirium and one can seriously wonder, at the end of the film, if Bateman does not live only his murders in his head.
Many viewers thought that ultimately the murders never happened and were part of Batemans fantasies.
However, the film’s writer spoke on the subject, saying, “For Mary and I, the book was a blur on what was and was not real. We didn’t think it was all true because some moments are literally surreal. But we’ve decided that we don’t like movies where the big reveal is everything happens in the character’s head or it’s a dream. […] I think I missed the end if the audience understands it the other way around. I should have done a more open streak. It seems like it all happened in his head, but not at all! “
This film deals with several areas:
-Human level: the madness of grandeur, narcissism caused by the slightest bit of power, cruelty and ambient falsehood, materialism, the dictatorship of appearance (“But inside doesn’t matter”), the irrepressible need to dominate (for example: the business card comparison scene), the eternal dissatisfaction of man, the boredom of life (What else is there to do?)
-Search for happiness: he has everything we are supposed to have to be happy but yet he is not. Not knowing what to do with a life for which he has achieved all the objectives (“There are no more barriers to cross”), he will devote himself entirely to the last two great taboos of our time: murder and sex.
Words I have learned:
- Yuppie (Young Urban Professional): jeune cadre et entrepreneur de haut niveau
- Sanity: santé mentale
- Modus operandi: mode opératoire
- Increasingly: de plus en plus
- Refurbished: rénové
- Fantasies: fantasmes
Article by Susie Christofle