(This doesn’t get a monologue, but Bateman’s Walkman reverie to Chris de Burgh’s antiseptic hit “Lady In Red” is one of my favorite musical moments.) But does the material always fit that style? It sometimes feels like Bale’s brilliant performance wants to break out of it, and into a movie that’s a little looser with its humor. It’s also the perfect style for the world of the film, where everyone seems to be aspiring to live amid gleaming surfaces that match the polished “professionalism” of the pop hits Bateman loves so dearly. Harron directs with the control Bateman wants to exert on the world if he’d directed the movie, it would probably look much the same. I like it, and I like it a little more each time, but those stylistic qualities make it a tough nut to crack. Keith: This is where I admit that I’m still not quite sure what to make of this movie after 14 years and several viewings. It makes me re-think The Shining, where Kubrick created the exact same contrast between endlessly building, breathless, icy tension, and a maniac busting loose with an axe. After so much hermetic deadness, it’s a relief to see him doing something explosive and cathartic. The genius is that the reversion back to control after an outbreak becomes its own kind of tension: There’s more discomfort in the airless business-card one-upsmanship scene than there is in Patrick Bateman murdering someone with an axe, both because the axe-murder is so comedically over the top, and because at least he’s showing emotions. The set decoration, the casting, the costuming, the acting, the scripting: It’s all just as bloodless and deliberate, until Bateman starts losing control of himself. Tasha: Much of that coldness comes from the film’s impeccable sense of control, from its first seconds: The opening pan across decorous, precisely artful plates gives way to a series of combed, pristine, high-cheekboned waiters who look just as arranged, and then they give way to the opening conversation between Bateman and his cronies, who deliver their lines with such crisp, forceful enunciation that they barely seem like they’re actually saying meaningful words. Any blemish either drives him mad, or becomes bloody evidence of his madness. As it stands, the pristine whites that recur in the film-from the witty red drizzle on the dessert plate in the opening sequence to the “bone” color of Bateman’s business cards-convey this impossible need on Bateman’s part to have the world conform perfectly to his specifications and desires. This latter point is crucial, since Ellis’ first-person tour through Bateman’s deranged, obsessive mind couldn’t be translated to the screen intact without alienating (and boring) virtually anyone paying to see it. Scott: We’ll no doubt be talking about Harron’s conceptual brilliance in adapting a book many considered unadaptable, but in terms of style, you’re right, Nathan: Shooting American Psycho in cold, Kubrickian whites, with maximum tonal detachment, both clarifies the masculine/capitalist savagery that’s central to Bret Easton Ellis’ book, and makes the mayhem palatable for the audience. In the hands of someone like Stone, American Psycho could easily have devolved into heavy-handed camp, a hyper-masculine exercise in stylized bloodshed à la Natural Born Killers. But Harron and her inspired collaborators take the opposite approach, transforming a one-joke novel (albeit one with an inspired joke) into a dry comedy of matters splattered with blood and viscera. Patrick Bateman normally wouldn’t tolerate a single hair out of place on his immaculately coiffed head, but in psycho mode, he isn’t at all averse to rampaging naked and bloody with a chainsaw as he pursues a victim. This relentless emphasis on appearance renders the bursts of extreme violence all the more shocking. American Psycho is a film of gleaming, impossibly perfect surfaces, devoid of comfort or warmth. Harron gives the film an almost Kubrickian coldness and detachment that perfectly suits the material, particularly Christian Bale’s brilliant performance, which alternates between clammy coldness and manic excitability. Nathan: A lot of big-name directors and actors were attached to American Psycho at various times, most notably Oliver Stone, before a relatively inexperienced, unknown director named Mary Harron ended up with the job.
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