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While watching American Psycho I had a bit of a thought, “literal” truth does not matter in stories where the perspective is skewered in several different directions. That is to say, it does not matter if Patrick Bateman is actually murdering any of these people or behaving this badly, he believes that he is, and that is all that matters. A literal truth would probably be hard to distinguish from his perspective and the world that he inhabits.
If one must think of it in a way that gives a concrete answer, I would say that at least one of the murders in this story is true, and the rest is the product of his feverish imagination and quickly disintegrating psyche. There’s plenty of ammunition for both camps to explore whether or not what the film shows us is really happening or not, but that’s not an interesting point of debate. A film like American Psycho gives us a rich and disturbing text, then asks us why we think what we do as we walk away from it. An argument over “yes” or “no” should be the beginning of the discussion, not the end point.
The first time I viewed the film, at the far too young age of thirteen, I didn’t know what the hell I had just watched. I only knew that what I watched had taken place in the very dark, scary mind of an incredibly attractive man. Returning to it, I expected for that original thought to be reinforced. I guess in a way, it was, but in a deeper way, I discovered that I didn’t care much whether or not he really did it. Bateman believes that he has entirely committed these acts, spoken about them, cried for help, and been met with gross indifference. American Psycho was oddly prescient in detailing an American landscape in which the very wealthy get off freely by arguing that they’re too affluent for jail time. Hell, half the time they don’t even have to be rich, they just have to be white.
White privilege, particularly the virulently hyper-masculine, extremely wealthy, heterosexual kind, is taken to task in a world where no one can distinguish each other from the next person, and business cards are treated like a dick measuring contest. This doesn’t even begin to cover the hilarity that ensues from trying to get restaurants to reserve you a table, something which is treated with a seriousness and severity that it approaches religious fundamentalism in its single-minded oppressiveness.
And walking us through this satirical world is Christian Bale’s unbelievably good work as Bateman. When playing serial killers or highly unlikeable people, most actors will try to find a way to give them at least one sympathetic moment. Bette Davis’ final scene in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane springs to mind. So does how endearingly nervous and sweet Norman Bates is upon first blush in Psycho. None of that is existent here in Bale’s work. Any moments of kindness or self-reflection feel like errors in his coding. Bale and the film-makers see Bateman clearly, and the type of men he symbolizes, and they hate him, skewer and satirize him endlessly. And perhaps it required a female director, Mary Harron here, to see clearly such a terrible man and the fragility of the entitled male ego and take it to task, over and over again.
