Other Reviews in this Series.
Director: Mary Harron
Writers: Mary Harron, Guinevere Turner
Cast: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas, Bill Sage, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon, Samantha Mathis, Matt Ross, Jared Leto, Willem Dafoe
Runtime: 102 mins.
2000
I was surprised to find out, in preparation for my second viewing of the film, that American Psycho was directed by a woman. By all appearances it has the hallmarks of hypermasculine filmmaking: A psycho-thriller about the powerful male id brutalizing (primarily) female bodies, in which the only speaking roles for women go to prostitutes, secretaries, and girlfriends. Yet, the fact that it was helmed by a woman makes sense of why American Psycho succeeds as pitch perfect satire despite all the potential pitfalls of such a gratuitous story. In fact, Harron pulls off the neat trick of avoiding gratuitousness on the story level by seating that gratuitousness firmly at the level of character.
American Psycho features Christian Bale's career defining role as Patrick Bateman, a high-ranking executive at a large corporation that apparently does very little of anything useful, as we only see its employees lunching or snorting coke, never working. Of course, this is part and parcel of the all too real satire. Work isn't about work for Patrick or his colleagues. It's about power, status, and style.
But that isn't enough for Patrick, or perhaps it is too much. He is driven by an uncontrollable bloodlust that pushes him to brutally murder other human beings. He has no feelings of empathy, and he is so alienated that he thrives on destroying humanity. We watch him as he tears through a corporate chic lifestyle in public, and tears through flesh in private. As the bodies pile up and the murders becomes more elaborate, we begin to wonder how this obviously imbalanced high status businessman doesn't get caught.
Patrick is just begging to be caught, after all. Early in the film we are treated regularly to Bateman's interior monologue. This is an exceptional use of voiceover. Much like Frank Underwood's direct to camera addresses in House of Cards, the purpose of Bateman's narration is to give us the sliver of empathy and understanding that we require in order to jump on board a story about a horrible person doing horrible things. The brilliance of this choice is that slowly, over the course of the film, the narration grows scant to nonexistent. Normally this sudden absence would be a telltale sign of bad writing, but here it is a piece in Harron's game of slowly shifting our orientation to this character. At first Bateman seems like a suave, if condescending, businessman who has his life put together. Then, as the atrocities compound and the voiceover ceases, we become acquainted with the sniveling maniac who screams confessions because he wishes badly to be punished.
Yet nobody acknowledges his crimes. I was less enthusiastic about the blatant ambiguity of the ending this time around, but what it does so well is highlight how untouchable Patrick is thanks to his social position. Patrick regularly tells his peers that he is a killer, but they either mishear him or play it off as a joke. It simply doesn't fit in with their established pattern of behavior, so they don't recognize it. He exists in a rarefied, almost dreamlike cultural space where everybody is in competition to be the perfect man on the surface--best business card, best apartment, best body, best girlfriend--but everybody is also a roiling monster underneath. Although Bateman's peers are portrayed as normal enough men in the film, the narrative suggests that comparatively twisted experiences may be happening in their minds. They just all wear convincing masks.
The film is at its finest when it is subtly delineating the politics of perfection. One of my favorite sequences happens early on, when a group of executives are whipping out business cards to compare. Each business card gets an insert that the camera lingers on while the qualities of the card are being described in detail, peppered by reaction shots and voiceover by Bateman. There is even a subtle whooshing sound as the Holy Grail of business cards is revealed; they may all look the same to us, but the scene communicates how much of a religious experience this dick measuring contest is for Bateman. Things get insane later on in the movie, but these early explorations of the culture are where the groundwork is laid.
A friend pointed out that American Psycho may be an interesting example of the female gaze. The male gaze is a well-explored concept in philosophy, cinema, and feminist studies, but the female gaze has proven trickier to get a handle on--certainly because of how little agency history has given women. The female gaze is apparent in American Psycho's big sex scene, when Patrick brings two prostitutes to his colleague's empty apartment. There is plenty of nudity, but the scene never feels gratuitous. Rather than leering at the bodies on display, the camera impartially catalogues the bizarre interaction playing out in the bedroom. This is further complicated by Patrick's own use of a camera to capture the sexual act. It's almost as if we are seeing a documentation of a documentation. We are observing the way men use sex to glorify their own self-image.
It's interesting to bring the female gaze into this discussion, because so much of the film is about capturing Bateman's male gaze. Maybe that's the difference: the film doesn't put us in Bateman's position, as a film like Maniac does so effectively. Rather, American Psycho puts us in the position of a companion to Bateman; someone who is there with him every step of the way, but is unable to do anything about his atrocities. That's why American Psycho succeeds as a takedown of wish fulfillment rather than an example of it.
4.5 / 5 BLOBS
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