In 1991, several novels were released that would go on to impact the world. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series made its debut, which has since been adapted into a successful TV series. The Firm by John Grisham would go on to become a highly praised Tom Cruise film. Stephen King made his obligatory annual release in Needful Things.
And then there was American Psycho. Bret Easton Ellis had already found major success as a writer with The Laws of Attraction and even further with Less Than Zero, which received a stellar film adaptation in 1987 with a powerhouse performance from Robert Downey Jr. that essentially launched a lifelong career for him. The film was nuanced, sad and endearing, and it touched people’s hearts.
That’s why so many people were confused and flabbergasted when American Psycho came out under the moniker of “from the writer of Less Than Zero.” American Psycho was shocking, vile, and offensive in every way you could imagine, told in the disconnected and borderline sociopathic narrative style that Ellis has become known for over the years, and the same way with which he wrote the source novel of Less Than Zero. It was the film adaptation that added humanity, and American Psycho was a guy punch for those unsuspecting. With racist, sexist and homophobic tones, it was hard to stomach, becoming banned in several countries and censored in even more, and most anyone who read it becoming scarred by the subject matter.
So when Mary Harron decided to sit down in the daunting director’s chair for a film adaptation of a book so rooted in controversy, it was a huge win for women. Taking the violence of the book and isolating it from the overwhelming offensiveness, instead turning it into something entirely different. Because it’s not just about the pleasures of conformity, and the importance of trends, it’s also a satirical statement about society itself.
*Ahem*
With the film adaptation finally making its silver screen debit in 2000, Harron managed to take the source novel and convert it into a film that had something to say about yuppie culture, homosexuality, and the way the world views and treats women, without overindulgence in gore or extremism. With Christian Bale managing to offer a performance that properly frames the protagonist in a way that made him weirdly likeable in the way that most psychopaths are, while never shying away from gruesome depictions of just how unstable and insane Patrick Bateman can be, the film transcended the initial shock value of the novel and shone a light upon aspects of society that were only merely touched upon in the book.
With grossly illogical behavior dashed in amongst casual discrimination disguised as progressive thinking, and with supporting characters that illustrate just how easily bad behavior can inadvertently be encouraged, American Psycho does what few films have the audacity to do without giving in to excess. Oddly comedic, brazenly violent and unflinching in its gaze upon social norms, it paints a portrait of humanity, or rather the lack thereof, that shows how dangerously close we are to danger at any given moment, and how the perpetuation of misogyny, and xenophobia as a whole, can easily create a monster.
Filmed in a way that looks dramatic and frames the world through a rich and powerful lifestyle, and housing such wonderful performances from everyone involved, including Reese Witherspoon, Mira Sorvino, Justin Theroux and Willem Dafoe, it’s a nearly perfect film that plays games with you as much as it allows you to enjoy it. Thanks to fantastic direction from Harron, as well as her advocation for Bale to play Bateman, American Psycho has withstood 25 years of existence and still takes a relevant and topical look at the world in which we live.
I only wish we would’ve gotten to see someone eat a chocolate covered urinal cake on screen, but then seeing Jared Leto catch an axe with his face was a fair and proper trade.