American Psycho

Written by: Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner (from the novel by Bret Easton Ellis) Starring: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Chloë Sevigny A startlingly good picture based on the infamous Ellis novel. Reportedly the project has been kicking around Hollywood for years, but there was this little problem with the source novel; namely, it had been scathingly condemned as a misogynistic, sadistic, pornographic bloodbath. In a politically correct world, making this book into a movie for mainstream audiences would have seemed impossible. Confounding things was the counterargument that the novel was in fact a very sly satire of the materialistic eighties. (In the interest of full disclosure I will report that I have never read the novel, just excerpts, but I will admit that some of them were fairly horrific.) Director Mary Harron took the bait, and let’s see what she has wrought. Is the movie a satire after all, or is that just cover for the basest sort of exploitation?

In fact, it may be neither. Certainly it satirizes the overheated eighties, but if ever a decade existed that didn’t need to be satirized, that’s probably the one (only topped, perhaps, by the seventies). And, in Harron’s expression of it, the movie is far from exploitative. I am not the first observer to note that this material might have been unworkable in the hands of a man. Whether it is just that it would have been politically unpalatable, or simply that only a woman could find an acceptable prism through which to view it is unclear. Whatever the case, Harron has rendered a chillingly precise and--incredibly--often funny study of alienation. Christian Bale (who is English, though you would not know it from this picture, and who bears a passing resemblance to Tom Cruise, which you would) plays Patrick Bateman, a highly paid Manhattan businessman of some sort (exactly what sort is never made entirely clear). He goes to all the right restaurants, he has a perfect apartment, perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect abs, and only one slight flaw: his passion for serial murder and mutilation. Throughout the course of the picture, Bateman disposes of numerous victims, mostly, though not all, women. Bale is outstanding in a role that was probably harder to pull off than it looks.

He has to maintain his detachment, his sang-froid, no matter what sort of mayhem he is in the midst of wreaking. Bateman, in the movie, has a surprising amount of insight into his pathology, but what really comes through is how completely disengaged he feels from the rest of humanity. Is it any wonder that he views human beings as just another commodity to be consumed (literally) at will? He romps his way through slayings, dismemberings, and sadistic sexual trysts, and never seems in the slightest danger of being caught, or even discovered. Until his collapse in the later part of the movie, he is in total control of a lifestyle that is all about indulging his whims.

But then, who among us does not want to indulge our whims? They are not (we hope) as base as Bateman’s, but that is part of Harron’s wizardry--if ever it was possible to feel any empathy at all for a homicidal maniac, Patrick Bateman is the one. The look of the picture is fabulous; in a way, it is a reflection of Bateman himself, icy, formal, and controlled. Harron and her cinematographer have given everything a gloss that is very late eighties. There are the requisite scenes of clubbing, cocaine snorting, and overpriced eateries that any movie about the 80’s must have, but of course, “American Psycho” has the little extra snap of carnage that distinguishes it from other movies about that era (like “Wall Street” or Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco”). The violence is actually very muted; it occupies little screen time, and while there are some scenes that won’t win any family value awards, Harron is more interested in the tension of impending violence. There are a few scenes that are destined to become classic. In one, Bateman holds a nail gun pointed at the head of his assistant Jean (Sevigny), who happens to have a crush on him. She is completely oblivious to what is happening, but everyone in the theater stops breathing.

Nothing actually happens to Jean, but the conversation between them that follows is both mortifying and hilarious, as Bateman expresses his fears of losing control, and Jean admits that, no, she doesn’t want to be hurt. Talk about your first date jitters! This is dark, perhaps sick, humor, to be sure, but it works. Bateman is a product of his era. He listens relentlessly to the most banal, middle of the road pop of the time, and then, while choreographing his next rampage, hilariously deconstructs the likes of Huey Lewis and Whitney Houston. In the end, he is really nothing more than a construct himself, much like the restaurants he frequents and the skin care products he uses. He may reflect the eighties, but even more, he reflects that dark part of the human psyche--not the part that wants to kill and torture, but the part that wants to salve itself, even if it is at the expense of others. Mary Harron has taken the story of a dysfunctional cog in the era of conspicuous consumption and turned it into a darkly humorous survey of the psycho terrain we all share. (4/24/00)