Patrick Bateman- American Psycho
While the film may seem somewhat restrained in comparison to Bret Easton Ellis’s source novel (It’d take a brave filmmaker to attempt “The Rat” on screen), it manages to capture the books scathing satire of Reagen-era yuppies and their shallow, consumer- driven lifestyles. At the centre of all this is Patrick Bateman; narcissistic, rich, misogynistic and completely deranged. Christian Bale trained for several months to achieve Bateman’s male model physique and apparently even took some inspiration from the dead eyed intensity of Tom Cruise. Director Mary Harron places particular focus on the novels black humour, which stems from Bateman’s obsession with the mundane banalities of his privileged life. One scene sees him have a catastrophic meltdown over a colleague’s superior business card, before getting the man drunk and joyously hacking him to pieces. What’s great about the scene is that after the horrific murder, Bateman inhales a deep breath, savouring the vile chemicals in his brain, before a celebratory cigar. All to the tune of Hip to be Square.
Psycho-babble: “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman; some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable… I simply am not there.”
