American Psycho Review
Psycho is a cult movie based on the much controversial novel by Brett Gaston Ellis. Directed by Mary Harrow, it is a dark comedy and a clever satire of America in the 1 us that artfully connects conformity, materialism, misogyny, narcissism, classicism and superficiality. If you are a movie connoisseur and enjoy well directed stories, you should definitely not miss American Psycho. But this movie Is a bit difficult to assimilate as it is hard on your guts and your mind due to the obvious violence and gore, it is not for everyone, but definitely Is a work of art!
The opening reedits are very artsy and one of the finest examples of cinematography Eve ever seen. The cranberry Juice Is very easily mistaken as drops of blood falling which Is a very subtle Imagery evoking sinister abstractions. The attention to detail Is almost Impeccable, from the dressing styles, the music culture, architecture, gadgets, the landscape, Interior decorations & design, to the movie texture. There Is a deep character study of Patrick Bateman, who Is a suave yuppie working at Wall Street. This wealthy 27 year old working as Vice President in Pierce & Pierce becomes a psycho killer by evening.
The character is portrayed by the flamboyant welsh actor Christian Bale whose performance was nothing less than chilling and sensational. Bale did a great job to bring out the split personality of Bateman. Bateman has many unusual traits. He is an attention-to-detail freak. During his elaborate morning routine, he even mentions why he doesn’t use aftershave with little or no alcohol. Why? “Because alcohol makes your skin dry and makes you look older”. He is the epitome of narcissism which is why he HAS to look good and have the perfect body. He even video tapes his sexual escapades.
His laconic manner of dialogues goes to suggest typical psychopathic behavior. There is a sever diversification and identity crisis depicted in the movie where Bateman desperately tries to stand out. Bateman was easily mistaken to be Halberds because they wore the same suits and went to the same salons. Another hilarious moment was when they were comparing their business cards and all of them were Vice presidents of the same firm! You know you are a Patrick Bateman when you are on the verge of murdering the other person if their business card is better than yours.
Bateman dines at the nines of restaurants, wears only designer clothes, lives in an uptown Manhattan apartment overlooking the American gardens, goes to the best spas and tanning booths, gets off on cocaine and if these aren’t enough to fill his hollowness, he resorts eating cooked brains of random strangers. He Is absolutely devoid of human emotions, those other than lust, greed and disgust. He kills his associate Paul Allen because Paul could get a reservation at some fancy restaurant and he couldn’t! There are some disturbing scenes where he commits grisly murders of his friend Elizabeth, homeless person and his dog out of sheer boredom.
As the story unfolds, his blood thirst becomes more acute and he rampantly kills people In order to get noticed. This is when he starts to lose grip on reality and things become more surreal which suggests that the killings were in his head. There are many junctures in the movie where this is almost evident, for example the ATM machine read “Feed me a stray cat” and Bateman tried to insert the cat forcefully through the slot. By the end of the to convey? ” Also did or did not Bateman kill all those people. But it is not a real story, he killings are clearly metaphorical.
It mocks an era where women treated like garbage; people resorted to conformity & materialism and where the well-off folks were ‘busy listening to annoying music, getting high, eating gourmet meals and talking big. It has a subtle philosophical tangent too, it is not that life is pointless and therefore Bateman does evil, but instead that he does evil to prove (to himself) that life is pointless and his actions have no ramifications. Hence a society without a moral compass makes the environment congenial for psychopaths like Bateman to be born.
