Psychological Warfare

Did he or didn't he? Only the makers of the American Psycho dreamscape know for sure.

It's quite possible that American Psycho is a brilliant movie. It's also quite possible that it's a dreary, obvious chop-'em-up dressed in Alan Flusser suits and Ralph Lauren boxers, drenched in Pour Hommes aftershave, all to disguise it as bracing satire on the greed-is-good '80s. The option audiences choose to accept (most likely, the former) will depend on what they think about Mary Harron's interpretation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 novel -- the one no publishing house would touch nine years ago, until Vintage Contemporaries picked it up and hurled it into bookstores. That ruckus took place forever ago. We'd almost forgotten about those scenes in which narrator Patrick Bateman cuts off the lips of still-alive hookers, then gnaws, slowly, on the remains of the dead and the barely living. For starters. After all, we've not yet mentioned batteries, rats and microwaves. There is no need.

Harron and co-writer Guinevere Turner have excised much of the book's gore. It's felt now, not seen, except in one smorgasbord scene during which a female soon-to-be victim stumbles across bloody corpse after bloody corpse. For their discretion, the filmmakers have been lauded by those who have seen the movie on the festival circuit, as though merely gutting the book of its wretched excess has somehow redeemed it. The film is being hailed as a caustic spoof, a one-fingered salute to the era of Reaganomics and preppy-handbook scum. Surely that was Ellis's original intention (one lost beneath the bloodbath), but simply eviscerating the book doesn't make its original intention any clearer. American Psycho could be set in 1987, 1997 or the day after the day after tomorrow. It's not as though Bateman is a product of his calendar.

He existed then, he exists now, he exists forever -- the serial killer hiding beneath the calm, clean-shaven visage of the upwardly mobile man whose medicine cabinet is filled with nothing but the finest in skin-care products. Before his name was Pat Bateman, it was Ted Bundy; before that, Ed Gein. American Psycho is no parody -- no more than, say, The Silence of the Lambs was a put-on. Sure, there are "funny" moments, those scenes that elicit charcoal laughs, especially one during which Bateman (Christian Bale) and his colleagues, all of whom look like members of the Wall Street: The Musical touring company, try to outdo each other with their business cards, comparing fonts and paper stock and watermarks. This is how they measure their dicks in the ivory towers of commerce; shame upon the poor bastard who chose to go with Franklin Gothic.

But when viewed in the right light -- say, in the reflection of the ax with which Bateman kills one colleague, Paul Allen, played by Jared Leto -- the movie is an ethereal, creepy, almost breathtaking meditation on the life of a mind snapped in two. It's very possible that the murders we see on screen -- and there are perhaps a dozen, almost all of which take place just out of our view -- do not occur at all, at least not in any tangible "reality." Yes, Bateman commits them, but quite possibly only in his own mind. He fantasizes about drinking blood, chewing on bone, and ventilating friends and lovers with nail guns and steel dildos. But he does none of these things, because he is weak, perhaps too weak to kill. He's a nothing, a replaceable nobody. Not even his closest friends recognize him. And how can a ghost, a transparent apparition who floats through this world insubstantial and unknown, kill anyone?

Bateman knows he is nothing but surface and sham. "There is no real me," he says in voice-over early on, while he is shown peeling a mud mask from his face (the film is often completely on-the-nose). "There is only an entity, something illusory." He delivers this monologue through gritted teeth, utilizing a too perfect American accent; you know no one who speaks so clearly, so cleanly. A little while later he tells us he wants only one thing, "to fit in." And he does, sort of: He has a perky little girlfriend, Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon), who just wants to be married; he has a mistress (Samantha Mathis), who is engaged to one of his colleagues; he has a handful of friends; and he has an assistant, Jean (Chloë Sevigny), who adores him to a fault. He is rich, but, like his stark designer apartment, he is utterly empty.

Bateman is also the ultimate shlub. He uses words like "doofus" and "tumbling dickweed" to describe his enemies. He bebops around his office with headphones on, grooving to Katrina and the Waves. He doesn't even earn his wealth, since his cushy job was bequeathed upon him by his old man. Bateman contributes nothing but sucks up everything -- gourmet meals, adulterated cocaine, Evelyn's misguided affection. He is utterly, unapologetically useless.

But to be a serial killer, a psychopath who hacks up business associates, beats the shit out of hookers and keeps the heads of models in his icebox next to the frozen yogurt, well, that's being a somebody. So Bateman convinces himself he is crazy, a victim of his own bloodlust: "Something horrible is happening inside me, and I don't know why," he narrates, trying to sell us and himself on the idea. "I think my mask of sanity is about to slip." But does it really? Are these horrible things we see on screen really going on, or are they merely products of his desperate imagination?

Harron, rather brilliantly, never quite lets on, though even the film's opening moment hints at the dreaminess and the fantasy of it all. What we think are drops of blood pouring down in front of a white backdrop are nothing but rivulets of dessert toppings. We can believe nothing we see or hear after that. Bateman speaks out loud, screams threats to those who treat him like a shadow, but no one pays attention. Not even his lawyer believes him when he confesses to two dozen killings; not even the cop (Willem Dafoe) investigating the disappearance of Paul Allen can conceive of Bateman committing any crime, much less murder. He's the ultimate pop-culture product, an amalgam of porn videotapes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But you can't kill with a Blockbuster card.

Bale plays Bateman as though he were made from chiseled concrete and corrugated cardboard. He's beautiful and anonymous, a perfect body propping up an empty head. Bateman explains he is searching for "catharsis," but when he finds none, he implodes. The man is a walking mass of nerve endings, looking for a shot of Novocain to ease his pain. If we are to assume these murders have not even taken place, then Bale manages to render Bateman as an almost sympathetic character. Perhaps he really does have feelings -- compassion? love? -- for the dowdy, lonely Jean. But he has no idea how to show them to her, save, perhaps, for shooting her skull full of nails. Or, at the very least, imagining it.

Show Pages
My Voice Nation Help
Sort: Newest | Oldest

Now Showing


powered by VOICE PLaces

Box Office

Scores provided by Rotten Tomatoes
