Fascinating, Ambiguous Film Echoes Hitchcock and Lynch

Rating: 9/10 (26 September 2005)

In a world where appearances are everything and a man's status is determined by the typography, watermark, and paper quality of his business cards, lurks an empty shell of man, who is either falling deeper into madness or satisfying his intense blood lust through a series of brutal murders. Such is the ambiguity of this fascinating film that it easily stands up to repeated viewing if only to explore what is real and what is illusion. Patrick Bateman, who is a distant relative of Norman Bates in more than name, is a loner surrounded by people with whom he never relates. Although he does not hide from the world like Norman did, Patrick's icy facade, which has been conditioned and pomaded into a mask of normality, shields him from the world as effectively as the remote motel hid Norman. With his mask in place, Patrick Bateman intermingles in a world of interchangeable people, who vie with each other for social position through table reservations at trendy restaurants, the quality of a hair cut, or the fabric of a custom-tailored suit. Money flows from toil-less occupations in a New York milieu, where, as Gordon Gecko in "Wall Street" so aptly summed up, "greed is good." The Reagan era on steroids, although Bateman's peers comment negatively on the president as they watch him try to explain away the Iran-Contra scandal during a televised speech. The young men's remarks about lying are ironic, when their own lives of sham and deceit are considered.
But, under the glistening surfaces, like the depths explored by David Lynch in "Blue Velvet," the being who is known as Patrick Bateman lives another life, possibly in his deteriorating mind or possibly in dark back alleys and designer apartments or possibly in both simultaneously. Simply put, Patrick does not like women, and he does not like rivals, and he is eager to dispense with both through his adept use of gleaming stainless-steel axes or state-of-the-art nail shooters. While Norman Bates had deep-seated problems with sex and evidently did not have physical relations with women, Patrick does have sex with women, who are often paid. Patrick's women become debased objects that he abuses, while he admires his own physique in the mirror. Even in the most intimate act of sex, Patrick does not relate with anyone other than himself. However, unlike Norman Bates, Patrick Bateman does not have a mother complex, in fact, he does not seem to have a mother or any family at all. He is a being with no past, no relationships, and no soul. The role is difficult, and Christian Bale as Bateman is outstanding. The perfection of his looks and physique make him physically ideal for the part. But his performance is more than surface sheen, and Bale disarms the viewer as he slowly escalates from a cool emotionless young professional into a psychotic as the character descends further into his own perverted delusions or manic blood lust. Bale's is a performance as ambiguous as the film.
The direction by Mary Harron is excellent as well. Harron wisely focuses on the satire inherent in the screenplay and downplays the violence, which is more often suggested than illustrated. Apparently, she has studied Hitchcock and knows that what the audience imagines can be far more powerful than what they actually see. "American Psycho" is a stimulating work that can provide fuel for heated discussion about what actually does or does not occur. Does the violence exist only in the pornographically violent doodles in Patrick's office agenda or did an unseen protector clean up the evidence of his series of murders? Or both? Like Hitchcock's "Psycho," the film swirls downward like dark water into a drain as Bateman is sucked further into madness, which eventually consumes his entire world and draws the viewer in with him.