American Psycho

Movie information:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psycho_(film)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/





Psychological thriller...true to its description, it takes viewers deep into humanities worst fears especially in this materialistic world...full of things, the void : which non-availability of core philosophy of enjoyment creates, engulfs us towards fakeness which ultimately becomes way-of-life and we start to believe that the fake world which we create around us and fake happiness with plastic smiles we wear, is real. It is not. The VOID reminds it repeatedly and its this void which was the source of rage in Mr. Bateman.


Viewers might wonder, what was wrong with him? Why the hell did he do it if he had everything?


Thats the whole point of the story :)


With all the things around him, he must have felt complete and satisfied. He didn't.


Instead he felt more incomplete with them than he would have been with them.


why?


His concept of happyness and enjoyment was shown in his admiration of his ability of buy and control things of desire (remember the scene of him admiring his biceps during threesome). He gets extremely nervous when somebody else gets ahead of him in this ability (remember the business card scene 1 and scene 2 ) ). This nervousness drives him closer to what we will perceive as insanity, but which i would just term as his reaction.


These reactions are smartly depicted partly imaginary and partly real. Kudos to author and director to show me this concept this way.Really great effort. Sometimes, it feel that he do not actually kill for real and everything just goes in his head and sometimes its for real. The vagueness of reality and imagination has a great value for this story as well as the movie, Because it doesn't matter if the things he did were for real or his imaginations. In real world, he would be criminal and in imaginary world he would be a psycho (to think these things) but both ways he is just reactive whereas most of the human population would suppress their reaction. His reactions has sole purpose of filling up the void but by the very nature of this fallacy, he aggravates this problem even more.


The scene where he and his buddies compare their business cards ((remember the business card scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU6SQ_e6VCo , http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-rpNlPxO3Q ) is more brutal psychologically than any of the visual violence shown. Here are a bunch of humans who have concentrated their individual existence on a piece of paper and this thing now dictates how much their life is worth. The shine, the font, the touch, the looks define their whole existence. They have converted them-self into just a bunch of meat slobs waiting to be butchered by one another rage seeding from the jealousness but putting up plastic smiles and makeups all over to look happy. One of my blog post on personal blog talks about this disgusting reality of our times (http://nanocreator.blogspot.com/2010/09/beyond-barbie-dolls.html).


There is one very important point in the philosophy of this movie which is so easy to miss out. Mr. Bateman is smart enough to fool everybody (including the smart detective) but he could not fool himself. He can't. We can't :)


Damn good movie...i would recommend it to anybody who want to know about the real crisis of our times.


26th nov 2010


I saw the movie again after many months and i find it equally exciting which is unusual. When i look back to this movie now, i guess i can confidently state that this is one of those movie which explains the problems of a whole generation which was born in "plenty" and hence feel the emptyness (which seems contradictory, but it isn't)...great acting by Christian bale and grand direction by Harron on an equally brilliant novel by Bret Easton Ellis...this is one of the most intellectually stimulating movie and apart from movies by Quentin Tarantino, this is the only movie in which i have seen a"meaningful use of violence" as a means to convey an idea.