American Psycho: Putting the 'man' in 'maniac'

OK, so first of all, the guy is RIPPED!!Ahem.I'm trying very hard to ignore the sex appeal of Christian Bale as I write this but I suppose that kind of IS the whole point of American Psycho. As long as you're rich,handsome and successful, it doesn't matter what you do in the wee hours of the night. So maybe everyone's favourite pastime isn't hacking unwitting co-workers to death with Huey Lewis and the News playing n the background but hey, what do you know?

There are lots of reasons for liking a film like American Psycho.

First of all, it's a brilliant satire of 80s America and its warped mores. The self-absorbed consumerism and yuppie narcissism of these neophytes in their Christian Lacroix couture is so well navigated that it almost submerges the meta-superficiality that imprints the film. It's almost as if the film pretends to be shallow for the sake of being true to its content in a perversely sly loop around the viewer's expectations and reactions to the events on screen.

Second of all, it's a great character study...in non-characters. All the characters are so absorbed in their own prosaic lives that they don't even pay attention to what the maniac amidst them is up to.It's telling that everytime a character asks him what he does/is doing, he mentions his murderous sensibilities and nobody bats an eyelid. And as for Pat Bateman himself, he's such an assembly line zombie, such a non-entity, that he could disappear and nobody would notice.Everybody is a copy of everybody else, so in a world of clones, if one vanishes, who could make out? His voiceover at the end when he says that he simply is not there...that sums up the utter nihilism and purposelessness of his won existence.

Third of all, there is such biting dark comedy lacing the entire progression of the two hour story.One could argue that there is no story, and there kind of isnt but then that again points to the absolute hollowness of the lives of these..ghosts.Everything Bateman does or says is some kind of hyper-real histrionic meant to scandalise and shock...a sort of attention grabbing stunt to break out of the monotony.There is such ambiguity about his exploits that by the end we are left confused as to whether he actually did all those things or not.His spouting of the monologue on Huey Lewis as "Hip to be Square" scored his killing of Paul says it all.It sounds like a magazine article. The apathy and boredom of the Baby Boomers, especially the loaded bourgeoisie in their fancy cars and plush apartments is completely encapsulated in that one sequence. Having absolutely no moral or philosophical roots to return to, they resorted to cheap thrills...a fact exaggerated and melodramatised in the way Bateman kills Paul for having a better visiting card than he does. The hilarious scene in the boardroom where his voiceover angrily,dangerously and bitterly explains the font,paper and size of a cardboard chit for which he would later kill, underscores the tragicomic existentialist crisis that privileged WASPs like him were struggling with, in Reagan era social depression.

Finally, to the feminists who cried themselves hoarse talking about the mistreatment of women in the movie, the director Mary Harron is a woman herself. The interpretation of the original novel is structured according to a woman's vision and therefore, adds a whole new dimension to the treatment of women in the film.Personally, the novel was far more sexist and chauvinist in the way it portrayed women but on screen, the effect is wry and canny rather than an adolescent male dealing with his fear of women (which is what Bret Easton Ellis came across as, at least to me). In the film, the essential asshole-ness of Bateman is played off against both the vapid, vile machinations of his equally bitchy fiance, the unsuspecting hookers whom he picks up and the gloomy, helpless bimbo he's sleeping around with (his friend's fiance)...covering pretty much all bases. However, in all these cases it's Bateman who's the neurotic, conniving jerk trying to get his own way and gratify himself, rather than any of the women being in any way responsible for augmenting his actions...in a sense becoming passive rather than active. A school of thought could argue that it therefore regresses into more anti-women territory by making them conform to the traditional role of doee rather than doer...but the fact remains that all the characters, inlcuding the men, suffer from that flaw of spectral inertia..serving the purpose only of the ludicrous protagonist.

American Psycho may not be the best film I've ever seen. But it definitely was one of the funniest.