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  • Film & TV Moderators: ghostfreak

Film: American Psycho

rate this movie

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    Votes: 3 7.7%
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    Votes: 3 7.7%
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    Votes: 10 25.6%
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    Votes: 23 59.0%

  • Total voters
    39

Edvard Munch

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I watched this film about 4 times now, and I'd say its decent and satirical to business life and the shallow pretenciousness of human behavior.

But can someone please explain to me how Patrick Bateman keeps killing all these people, confesses it and still does not get caught? I know it's very significant and has a deep meaning, but I cant grasp it. At the end he says "This confession has meant nothing."

Someone clue me in.
 
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What I understood from seeing the movie and reading the book was that even though he admits that he killed the one specific guy, that no-one believed him because they had apparently seen said guy in London the week before.

This is possible, however I feel that it is more likely a case of mistaken identity of the sort that pervades the whole book/film where they are constantly calling Bateman by different names, and he is never 100% sure exactly who other people from other firms/companies are.

Either that or it is all in his head and he is just having fucked up hallucinations/delusions.

CB :)
 
If you liked the movie that much you will probably love the book. Personally, I thought the movie sucked compared to the book.
 
I have two explanations that I came up with.

1. Patrick Bateman actually has not killed anyone, it is all in his head. He sits in his office all day long and is either listening to his tapes, watching television, or fantasizing about killing people and drawing those fantasies in his day planner. The mistaken identities just perpetuates this because some people are seen to be missing, but are found later on, etc.

2. Patrick Bateman has acutally killed lots of people. And I mean lots of people. He has been doing it for a long time, and will continue doing it. And he will never be caught. The reason for this is that he isn't really human. He is the personification of all that is evil and wrong in the city of New York. He is not aware of this, and continued to 'live' his life as he has done, except that his bloodlust had been spilling into his days.

The mistaken identities aids this because some people that are killed are thought to be alive, etc. So Paul Allen was actually killed by Bateman, his 'lawyer' just mistook another man for Allen, as well as not knowing that Bateman was actually Bateman. And his stern conviction not to explore that further shows that the lawyer doesn't believe a word of "Bateman's" story. The woman in Paul Allen's apartment is basically like "the cleaners" that clean up his messes, so Bateman can continue to kill and not be caught.

Bateman is evil personified and is allowed to kill wantonly as a punishment to the conceited, selfish, uncaring affluents of New York City.
 
Chaos Butterfly said:
however I feel that it is more likely a case of mistaken identity of the sort that pervades the whole book/film where they are constantly calling Bateman by different names, and he is never 100% sure exactly who other people from other firms/companies are.

Bingo.

It's that whole 'things you own end up owning you' message, he basically appears as a carbon copy of everyone else....the pages he discusses his obsessions with music and his possessions, send the message he owns these things, they consume his being....but he himself is nothing, no remorse for what he has done, no morals. I took it that throughout the book, the mistaken identities between him and all of the other businessmen was like they all appear replaceable..so similar, striving all for status with the nicest business card and horn rimmed glasses...they try so hard to all be alike, when one possibly breaks from the norm that he is so engrained in and confesses all of his terrible murders, even his lawyer cannot believe him...
i do NOT think it was in his head at all...i think that takes away from the whole meaning of the book...
gotta love Ellis...:)
 
bateman never killed anyone, ellis has always stated, that the point of the novel was to satirise the anonymity , that comes with that time and place , (80's new york yuppies), everyone was so into thier own lives, thier own existance, that he used the fact that batemen COULD have killed many people and none of these people around him would ever have known any better, as a satirical point.
 
i'd strongly recommend reading the book. it'll probably make things clearer for you, and it's also better than the movie.
 
Pounding_Grooves said:
bateman never killed anyone, ellis has always stated, that the point of the novel was to satirise the anonymity , that comes with that time and place , (80's new york yuppies), everyone was so into thier own lives, thier own existance, that he used the fact that batemen COULD have killed many people and none of these people around him would ever have known any better, as a satirical point.

i thought the point of stating the he had killed them in the book and was never caught would be the satire of the anonymity, rather than just the thought of it... that would seem to make more sense to me...
...eh i guess it's all open to interpretation, or so the end of the book/movie would seem....
still very good, i would much rather recommend the book over the movie, though the pages upon pages of music/product details can get rather boring....
 
I admit I have not read the book, for I couldn't really bring myself to it after all i'd heard. But my interpretation is that I'm leaning towards the 'it's all in his head' theory.

I remember a scene in which he's just killed someone, in public, and is being chased by the cops. I recall he pulls out a gun and shoots at a police car and it explodes in a very cartoonish manner, and his reaction afterwards is equally cartoonish. I believe he was just visualising his own fantasies, ie. being an invincible murderous psycho on a rampage with cartoon powers

I don't know if this comes down to cheap special effects, but I thought the movie up until that point had a certain 'class', and that cheesey explosion and the following scenes... from memory re-entering his apartment block covered in blood, or maybe running around at night with a chinsaw inside that building... (I can't exactly remember)... in any case seemed to slip a little too far from the sense of a normal setting which had been established earlier, and therefore was intentionally used to point out the fact that it all was a dream sequence. Just my thoughts.
 
Pounding_Grooves said:
bateman never killed anyone, ellis has always stated, that the point of the novel was to satirise the anonymity , that comes with that time and place , (80's new york yuppies), everyone was so into thier own lives, thier own existance, that he used the fact that batemen COULD have killed many people and none of these people around him would ever have known any better, as a satirical point.

correct... along with the subtext that it doesn't matter what you're like inside once you're wearing a good suit with the right cufflinks.

I like asmodeus' point 2 also, but I don't believe Ellis ever set out to write a polemic.
 
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xena said:
i'd strongly recommend reading the book. it'll probably make things clearer for you, and it's also better than the movie.

but the movie has some great bits that just couldn't or didn't come across in the book... i.e. the business card scene :D
 
^ The business card scene is one of the best. I love the emotion that Christian Bale put into that specific performance.
 
i love this movie. just a random thought: didnt anybody notice how christian bales english accent kept threatening to somehow burst from his clipped americanized dialogues. I noticed it especially in the end when he was crying on the phone to his lawyer. Whooopedoooo
 
The whole "he wasn't a killer" argument rests on the fact that an associate of Bateman's remembered having lunch with Paul Owens. This seems logical, but you're all forgetting one thing: THE ASSOCIATE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW WHO BATEMAN IS!! The dude is so confused with the identities that he thinks Bateman is someone else entirely, so how on earth are we to trust that he really knows who Paul Owens is if he thinks Davies is Bateman and Bateman is Davies?

I think it's definitely more of a strong message about anonymity and self-absorption if you look at it that way - he got away with murder because no one was entirely sure who he was opposed to someone else - and the SAME went for his victims! They were all replacable.

--- G.

p.s. doesn't Bateman feature briefly in one of Ellis' other novels?
 
^^^ i'm not sure about *patrick* bateman himself, but i know that the character who james van der beek plays in the rules of attraction is supposedly his younger brother.
 
onetwothreefour said:
^^^ i'm not sure about *patrick* bateman himself, but i know that the character who james van der beek plays in the rules of attraction is supposedly his younger brother.

Yes Patrick Bateman does come in slightly in the Rules of Attraction and Sean Bateman as played by James Van Der Beek was his younger brother. Sean actually appears in American Psycho the book, but only briefly.

CB :)
 
if you think patrick bateman never really killed anyone

you should get your ass to the library and read the book instead of the chessy ass movie adaptation

then you will discover that you are WRONG
 
The novel gives a much better insight into the mind of Bateman not to mention a more graphic account. In my opinion he didn't murder anybody. He is extremely unstable, he lives in another world, he created a fantasy and is unsure of whats reality and whats fiction. The novel gives you a deeper insight. For example every scene he is speaking to someone they call him the wrong name. He's Davis or someone else. Only when he's with his 3 close friends he's spoken to as Patrick Bateman. As usual the novel is far more superior. This particular book I felt before the film was made that it was going to be a struggle to get the characters mental state disected in a 100 minute movie. Hence, the reason why so many people were bewildered and confused at the films close.
 
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