It's a book adaptation into film (the book is slightly ambiguous). The film is not so.
The visible blood trail? Who wouldn't notice that?
The cop car blowing up? Quite unreal!
Yet the linear violent details of other events on film are unlike the book (or don't/wouldn't translate well as pure fantasies of mind).
(IMO, in the film adaptation) He killed all of them - the point is existential. And it is a commentary on the superficiality of the 80s (or for that matter any any era).
He is the anti-hero: pathetic, sycophantic in peer circles like those he associates with (the yuppie rich elite they each create an image-of-self for each other and to separate them from what they don't identify with; deemed to be beneath them), he despises himself (and does not even know who is the real Patrick Bateman, "I feel my mask of sanity is slipping," he loathes the fact that he cannot identify a real ego with emotions within himself), he is a sociopath and ultimately a psychopath – who is just trying to "fit-in." . . . This is his existence.
From the movie (it is literary existentialism):
"There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping you and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable but. . . I simply am not there."
"I have all the characteristics of a human being- flesh, blood, skin, hair-but not a single clear, identifiable emotion except for greed, and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside me and I don't know why. … My nightly bloodlust has overflowed into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy."
"In 1987 Huey Lewis and the News released this, Fore!, their most accomplished album. I think it is their undisputed masterpiece, on it is "Hip To Be Square," a song so catchy that most people probably don't listen to the lyrics. But they should(!) because it's not just about the pleasures of conformity and the importance of trends."
"Did you know that Whitney Houston's debut LP called simply Whitney Houston had four number-one singles on it? . . . It's hard to choose a favorite track among so many great ones, but "The Greatest Love of All" is one of the best, most powerful songs ever written about self-preservation and dignity. It's universal message crosses all boundaries, and instills one with the hope that it's not too late to better ourselves. to act kinder. Since, Elizabeth, it's impossible in the world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathize with ourselves. It's an important message, crucial, really, and it's beautifully stated on the album."
"Harold, it's Bateman. Patrick Bateman. You're my lawyer so I think you should know-I've killed a lot of people. Some escort girls, in an apartment uptown, some homeless people, maybe five or ten, an NYU girl I met in Central Park. I left her in a parking lot, near Dunkin' Donuts. I killed Bethany, my old girlfriend, with a nail gun. And a man, some old faggot with a dog. Last week I killed another girl with a chainsaw-I had to, she almost got away There was someone else there, maybe a model, I can't remember but she's dead too. And Paul Allen. I killed Paul Allen with an ax, in the face. His body is dissolving in a bathtub in Hell's Kitchen. I don't want to leave anything out here...I guess I've killed 20 people, maybe 40-I have tapes of a lot of it. Some of the girls have seen the tapes, I even...well, I ate some of their brains and I tried to cook a little. Tonight I just, well, I had to kill a lot of people and I'm not sure I 'm going to get away with it this time-I mean I guess I'm a pretty sick guy. So-if you get back tomorrow, I may show up at Harry's Bar, so, you know, keep your eyes open."
The elite are truly powerful and all his "blood-lust" murderous episodes and his confession (to his lawyer) during one-night of insane murderous overload amounts ultimately to: NOTHING. There is no catharsis, there is no penance, there is no judgment, there is no penalty, there is only the white-wash of his horrible deeds confessed. He enters a newly painted white-room (apartment), were he should find within the apartment of Paul Allen (Paul Owen, in the Book) all the horror and mess of his deeds committed. Yet there is nothing - only white.
The women near the end (in the freshly painted white apartment of Paul Allen) instructs him: "to not make any trouble and just walk away."
In the bar the superficiality of self spills over onto the floor of reality (before him) - he is confronted by that superficiality. It is a recurrent theme in the movie (now brought into extreme focus): that of plastic unidentifiable non-unique shallow ego confusions; who is who; and who is mistaken for someone else. Even Bateman's identity has been confused with being: Halberstam and/or Davis, and the same for Paul Allen. He has been confused with other identities, as well, even though there is a real ongoing investigation over his sudden disappearance, Bateman fakes a call that Paul is in London. Then people believe it and someone even claims they might have seen him (Paul) there.
The end of the movie:
"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed... My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. I fact I want my pain to be inflicted on
others. I want no escape. ... But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing..."
A sign on the wall behind him: "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT."
His deeds are white-washed, cleansed, by people far more powerful than one pathetic individual. There is no moral as to why was he protected (his deeds white-washed) because there are no morals for those believing themselves to be beyond good and evil. In a way; a sense; the system is unsympathetic to Bateman even though it protects him, as it is only worried about its superficial image. The confession is meaningless and disregarded in its' entirety in a superficial world that simply moves on; and moves on immediately – regardless of self (or lost self). There was no escape for him from his existence. There was no exit.
Last edited by topal63 (2007-04-26 11:40:39)
