American Psycho

American Psycho

It is well that a woman directed “American Psycho”, the novel of blood thirst has been adapted into a film about male narcissism. According to Mary Harron, the director of ‘American Psycho’, if it had been directed by men they might have considered Patrick Bateman as a serial killer driven by psychological twists but she sees him as just another man being driven by common male desires and compulsions, only acting them out more than usual.

Most men are not chain-saw killers; they only act that way while doing business. Look at the traders clawing each other on the floor of the stock exchange. Listen to used-car dealers trying to dump excess stock on one another. Consider the joy with which one megacorp stock-raids another and dumps its leaders. Study such films as “In the Company of Men,” “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Boiler Room” and the new “The Big Kahuna.” It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and to survive you’d better be White Fang.

As far as novels go, Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 best seller was passed from publisher to publisher like a hot potato. As for film projects, it’s gone through screenplays, directors and stars for years. It was picked up by Oliver Stone who planned on starring Leonardo DiCaprio before ending up back in Harron’s arms with Christian Bale (to try seeing this material in Stone’s hands imagine if Tchaikovsky’s head exploded during the “1812 Overture” scene in Ken Russell’s “The Music Lovers” and then spin it out to feature length).

Harron is less impressed by Patrick Bateman than any man would have been; perhaps because she is able to recognize how often her everyday encounters resemble those with someone like him except for body count being female filmmakers dealing with male actors who look an awful lot like Patrick Bateman doesn’t help either.

She understands that there is some connection between all the time he spends in front of a mirror after waking up applying various male facial products while looking at himself lovingly and shooting people who annoy him, make him angry or are just unlucky enough to be within his line of sight; it’s ego driven narcissism fueled by greed where most victims happen to be women but will suffice in case of shortage.

The film is about the lifestyle of male executives. These men indulge in self-glorification until they reveal their sexual insecurity through card rivalry, clothes and restaurants. They are always bitter towards each other because one can afford to look important but not actually important. It is a point of comedy in the movie that Bateman has a colleague who looks exactly like him (Jared Leto). (They don’t have the same face, but there’s an odd negative-space resemblance.)

A lot of people get killed in mean ways in the book and movie: That’s why they’re infamous. I’ve heard arguments over whether some of them were fantasies (“can a man really aim a chain saw that well?”). All of them are equally real or unreal, and it doesn’t matter: The murders aren’t meant to be believed as real events; they’re meant to make visible the frenzied nature of the territorial male when his will is frustrated road rage, golf course rage, family abuse, sports fans’ behavior.

And so you see why Harron has called it “feminist.” Feminist it may be as well as libelous against all those sane, calm civilized men who it does not describe. But true to type. It catches Bateman in a clear satiric light and despises him thoroughly…Christian Bale is heroic in allowing the character to leap joyfully into despicability; this actor has no instinct for self-preservation.

When Bateman kills it’s not with the zeal of a slasher-movie villain with hobbyist thoroughness. Lives could have been saved if he’d been given a basement instead of living in a high-rise, with a workbench and lots more nails.

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