Bret Easton Ellis wrote his 1991 novel "American Psycho" to satirize the excess of the 1980s in all its materialistic and greedy glory. He used extreme violence and sexual situations to emphasize his point, but readers got so caught up in the book's carnage, they never got the joke. Luckily, director Mary Harron is in on the joke, and she has no problem letting viewers find the humor either.
In adapting the film, co-writers Harron and Guinevere Turner (who has a small role in "Psycho") have carved out a substantial chunk of Ellis' narrative, in which Wall Street broker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) chronicles his days and nights in the Big Apple. His life is quite a charmed one - Patrick dines only at the most chic of restaurants, buys only the highest-priced cocaine and wears only the most expensive designer suits.
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There's one more thing about Patrick: he's a sociopathic murderer, and "Psycho" follows him as he carries out his methodically crafted execution plans with everyone from prostitutes to co-workers, with the aid of only the most state-of-the-art chainsaws, axes and other appliances.
How can this possibly be seen as funny? Because we're led to suspect Patrick never actually commits these violent acts; he only envisions them. However, we can never be completely comfortable in the knowledge that these murders actually do not happen, leaving us in a state of perpetual hallucination.
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Patrick is a self-loving narcissist. He worships every aspect of his own existence and gets obsessed with the minutiae of his appearance. Patrick fastidiously decorates his apartment and sculpts his body (doing 1,000 stomach crunches a day and applying various facial creams). He's what Norman Bates would have become had he been born 30 years later on the Upper East Side.
And he must always one-up his colleagues; one of the highlights of "Psycho" involves Patrick and his co-workers showing off their business cards - the embossing, the texture, the coloration. Among these men, size isn't the issue. They're in a contest where whoever has the greatest professional endowments is the winner.
What excites Patrick the most about his murder schemes is the element of creationism involved; for him, it's the only thing he can do that has a definite impact. Unfortunately, even his malfeasance goes unheralded, making him the very definition of the phrase "couldn't get arrested."
Patrick fights against the feeling that his life is unsubstantial. His is a tell-tale heart that gives himself away only to the audience, not the police or his colleagues, because we are the only ones who notice him. For example, when asked what he does for a living, he states "Mergers and Executions," but his date just waxes on about how unfulfilling a career in mergers and acquisitions must be.
"Psycho" is full of these little jokes - other standout moments include Patrick's tongue-in-cheek monologues on Genesis, Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and the News, all transcribed from the book - ensuring that we never take it too seriously.
Harron and Turner were wise to slash the graphic depictions Ellis used in the book. There was virtually no way to bring Patrick's scenarios of mutilation to the big screen and not have the film become an uncomfortable experience.
At the same time, however, "Psycho" does lose something. Without those scenes, audiences are not fully able to get inside Patrick's psyche. His murders are a work of art in which this banker invests pride and panache, not unlike a painter or a chef.
All truly great black comedies must answer the "so what?" factor; there has to be a point beneath its amusing surface. In charting the excess of the me-decade, Ellis did not simply say that greed wasn't so good after all and that the 1980s played host to an extremely shallow culture. If that's all one can glean from the film, then they are on the same par as the characters he ridicules.
No, Harron asks us to evaluate ourselves and see if we are really as different as we assume. Clothes now more than ever feature brand names on the outside, plastic surgery rates never have been higher and mood altering drugs are still prevalent, so the message is absolutely relevant. He challenges us to deny the allegation that we are still a society about show.
What wins us over is Bale as Patrick, who turns gruesome depravity into child's play in a manner we thought only Hannibal Lecter could do. His commanding performance turns this unsympathetic anti-hero into a protagonist. Bale works himself into a frenzy, often shifting from confident serenity to bullet-sweating anxiety in the same scene.
As Patrick's world (and as far as "Psycho" is concerned, it is his world, as Patrick is in every scene) gets progressively crazier, Bale's tone becomes increasingly playful; he finds humor in Patrick's contempt where Ellis only radiated rage.
We've now come far enough that a film taking place in 1987 must be labeled a period piece, and as such, production designer Gideon Ponte deserves much credit for recreating Patrick's world in all its glamorous sterility.
"Psycho" also features solid work from Willem Dafoe, Samantha Mathis and Chloe Sevigny, but it's Bale who runs with Ellis' and Harron's cues, and almost finds the soul of a soulless character. He shows that Patrick is already in too deep - an observation that would definitely do Genesis proud.
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