Like all true satires, American Psycho isn't afraid of being misunderstood. It is a deeply black comedic looks at the shallow lives that first became truly available in the 1980s. It was a time when the growing backlash against sexual liberation was teaming up with corporate prosperity.
This movie captures all those ideas in a twisted allegory. Patrick Bateman is the perfect embodiment of style over substance. He does hundreds of crunches to have the perfect body. He shows that perfect body off in the best tailored suits. He makes sure that the body and suits are seen by the right people by eating in the most exclusive restaurants. He affords all of these luxuries by holding down a Wall Street job in Murders and Executions. Or is it Mergers and Acquisitions? But what does all of that mean to him? Nothing.
Why should it mean anything to him when his friends and coworkers are interchangeable? At one point in the movie he passes himself off as one of his victims, not because they look alike, but they are all so alike in attitude and vapidness that no one pays any attention to which of the Pierre Cardin suits they are dealing with.
The perfect embodiment of the young Reagan Republican corporate warrior doesn’t feel anything. He doesn’t get any satisfaction from his job, his friends, his apartment or his lifestyle. He does find satisfaction in killing. He feels calmness and relief in the flow of blood…
And Huey Lewis.
Possibly Phil Collins too.
This movie carefully balances the moods of the scenes. It slides silkily from tension, to humor; from horror to confusion. It doesn’t matter to him who he kills. Coworkers, girlfriends, rivals, strangers all fall victim to his killer sense of fashion and then his killer sensibility.
Christian Bale is always amazing to watch as the eerie tension builds or in the outrageously funny scene where he is dancing behind one of his victims, while she is being bored by his explanation of how commercially accessible his favorite 80s pop group is.
Reese Witherspoon and Chloe Sevigny are interesting as the two main women in Patrick Bateman’s life. They are dependant on him for the same reason but by different means. Reese Witherspoon plays his fiancée who is willing to put up with what she believes are Patrick’s “infidelities” as long as it is going to lead her to a life in the Hamptons. Chloe Sevingy is hard-working and wants to be independent but her economic future depends on making sure that Patrick looks like he is actually doing work.
This movie works on so many different levels.
Bateman is a monster and like all the best monsters he is the product of his culture taken to an extreme. He is commercialized masculinity. He is feminized by his interest in fashion grooming and décor. He hates in others what he perceives as his perfections. He is a beast hidden among the lambs. Disguised as one of their own, but with a ravenous hunger that can’t be contained.