American Psycho (2000)
"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable... I simply am not there." Patrick is having a hard time at work. He does his job well, he has a girlfriend and yet he can't stop from wanting to kill people. Today might be the day he stops...or maybe the day the bodycount increases! Overall: To start with, the “Unrated version” is only different than the “r-rated” in terms of the sex scene involving Bateman and the 2 ladies. It isn’t even about the sex so much as it is the character’s attitudes and actions during that scene that were deemed offensive. When you see him look into the camera with pride at himself...that’s what was essentially removed. This film is a true masterpiece that actually gets better as time goes on. The book is just so “out there” with depravity that the making of this film was controversial in itself. The book has such graphic descriptions of sex, torture, murder, etc., simply the making of this film was gonna be ground-breaking. Knowing the U.S. censors, there is no way you could have done many of the scenes from the book, so the director was gonna have to find another way around it. They would also have to figure out how to incorporate the many unique qualities of the book, such as the diatribes on films and rock groups. What the final product consisted of was a very good representation of the book. Knowing you literally can’t film the book as it is written, this is a good attempt. The movie definitely takes the “Reservoir Dogs” approach to the torture it does show, which is fairly little compared to the book. It gives us the "heard but not seen" approach or shows you what he’s going to do and then the end result while letting you visualize what was happening. I enjoyed the movie for what it was: a decent attempt to make a very disturbing and interesting book into a movie. What makes the book so good is the style it is written in. We watch how Bateman spends each chapter going more insane and the torture scenes while extremely disturbing are still fairly unique. Basically the yuppie consumerism is what makes both medias work and that is why you should watch the film. But I definitely do not recommending watching the film without reading the book first. . . Spoilers . . . . . . . . . . . Many have tried to explain away the ending to the film (and the book) given the scene where Bateman confesses to his attorney to killing people and his attorney does not believe him. Some feel that the entire film is just Bateman killing people “in his head” as if the average person thinks of re: a boss or a mean neighbor. Others say that Bateman has lost touch with reality altogether and either really did kill people or never killed anyone. Even more, people have said that Bateman is more of a symbol of American Consumerism in that everyone sells out, and hence that why no one knows anyone’s name and hence when people/corporations dies, no one notices. However, my idea is this. I like to think of a line from “Six Degrees of Separation.” Bateman has realized that “no one notices anything.” That everyone is so absorbed within themselves that all they do is assume everything is the way it should be without recognizing the truth. Bateman cares for no one and is bored in his own life that everyone else means nothing to him...and he wants meaning. He hopes each killing will either get him caught or provide some meaning, and it doesn’t. The fact that the attorney doesn’t believe Bateman only shows the attorney isn’t paying attention to anything around him and is unhappy he’s being called on it. The only one paying attention is his secretary and the fact that she is, causes Bateman to act weird/odd in her presence because then he truly sees his "true self." He wants people to care but doesn't know how to react when they do. Comparison: The Banker meets Less than Zero |
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