Well after come up with the initial idea of the opening scene, "Sweet Dream", a psycho thriller movie with a bit of horror, as a director, I need to start research about the movie with similar genre and context to help developed the plot & story more as well as see how they film the movie. So that's what I do, I go on the internet and looking for movie with similar context. In the end, this movie called "American Psycho" (2000) was interested me the most and I decide to do a research and analyze on that movie.
DISCLAIMER: THIS MOVIE IS A HORROR MOVIE WITH A LOT OF BLOODY AND KILLING SCENE. PLUS, THIS BLOG POST HAVE MANY STRONG LANGUAGE SO CONSIDERED BEFORE CONTINUE READING THE BLOG.
*SPOILER ALERT*
This blog post would include the content from the actual movie
American Psycho (2000) is a crime, drama, horror movie (according to IMDb) about a successful business man in the Wall street called Patrick Bateman in the late 1980s. However, behind his normal person behavior that he shown in daily life, there is whole dark story behind it.
The movie was directed by Marry Harron, staring by Christian Bale as the main character and was the movie that set the name for this male actor.
BRIEF PLOT SUMMARY
The movie set in the late 1980s tells the story of Patrick Bateman, who is a successful businessman on Wall Street. Later on, when he has a meeting with his co-worker, he gets so angry with the fact that Paul Allen, one of his peer, have a better business card than his. To relieve that angriness, he went out into an alley, assaulted and brutally killed a homeless man. Then on Christmas day, he invited Paul Allen to his house then killed him with his axe. Even though he has cleaned the crime scene, he is still being investigated by an officer called Donald Kimball but Kimball could not find anything to accuse Bateman.
Patrick Bateman then called 2 ladies to his house to have sex with him but when the 2 ladies leave, they are covered in physical injuries. Then after that, he gets angry in another meeting when his peer, Louis showed off his business card which once again, makes Patrick want to kill him. But after realizing that Louis is gay, he ran away. Suddenly, many days after, Officer Kimball called him out and told him that he is no longer on the suspected list. He then keeps satisfying his wants by asking Christian and Elizabeth to his house to have sex again. However, this time Elizabeth was bitten to death by Patrick and then Christie was being chased by Patrick, naked with a chainsaw on his hand. No matter how loud Christie scream, nobody comes out to save her. She then died as Patrick drop the chainsaw on her body, creating one of the most classical scenes in history.
After that, Patrick went out to cash out some money from an ATM but the ATM asked him to "feed me a stray cat". When he was going to do it, a woman stop him but then is killed by Patrick with a pistol. Police came after and have a gunfight with Patrick. He then ran into a building, shot the security guard, find his room sit down, crying while calling his lawyer and confess all of his crime.
The next morning, Patrick was going to Paul Allen's house again to delete all of his crime evidence but realized that the house is now being sold by a real estate company and the room had no sign of his crime. He then goes to meet his lawyer, who doesn't believe any of his confesses, including the story about Patrick killing Paul and told Patrick that he had lunch with Paul Allen last week in London. He also called his secretary to check his office drawer and saw a notebook full of drawings that match all the crimes that he did. The movie ends with a zoom-in to Patrick Bateman's face while he was saying that his confession is unworthy.
ANALYSIS
The end of the movie until now is still a big question for all viewers about what really happen in the movie and there are theories about the story behind American Psycho.
The first theory is that all the things happened in the movie is just inside Patrick Bateman's imagination which quite make sense. The second theory however, is more scary, people suggested that Paul did killed some people for real but no one in the movie care or notice it.
However, both theory suggest an idea about the dark and corrupt society in America during the late 1980s. First of all, the movie represent a society full of people with selfish and obsession with fame and power. This was shown my many scene, such as the scene Patrick Bateman wake up in the morning when he tried his best to clean himself, use cosmetic, showing his obsession with appearance. Then it was the scene when Patrick and his co-worker flexing their business card with each other and interestingly, throughout the movie, we only see those "business man" showing off their business card without talking about their business work but rather talk about having sex, drugs. It shown how corrupt the society is, a society with careless yuppie who only focus about their fame, name, power and wealthiness. Throughout the movie, those yuppie are shown very ruthless, wild (playing drugs, criticizing and discriminating woman, ...) Furthermore, the word "Dorsia", a name of a restaurant, was repeated a large amount of time during the film, showing it is a luxury place and it is the scale of power and wealthiness for the yuppies. In general, the wealthiness of being a yuppies make character in the movies have wrong mindset with all of dirty wanted and demand, creating an overall rotten community.
Patrick is a victim and a representation of this rotten society. In the beginning of the movie, he said "I want to fit in" showing that all of his behavior is being heavily affected by the society. Like every other character in the movie, Patrick play drugs (interestingly play drugs a lot), obsess with sex (2 times called lady to his house to have sex, often saw him open a porn video while doing exercise in the morning). He takes it personal when his status can not match someone else's status. He keep flexing about his wealthiness and his knowledge about music in every conversation, even before killing someone or before having sex. Most importantly, the differences between what he is saying versus his action. In one scene, he can talk about we should take care of homeless people but after that he killed a homeless guy. Patrick can be called the product of the darkest and most negative aspects of the yuppies cultural.
The world in American Psycho is a very untrustworthy world. It is a challenge for characters to identify each other in the movie. Making every words that characters speech become unreliable. For instance, is Patrick's lawyer sure that he was having lunch with Paul Allen when he could not even realize his own client (Patrick). Moreover, people was careless when see Patrick throwing out Paul Allen body and Christine's screaming. Is this showing that everyone in that world is not really care even if Patrick really killed someone?
In the end, the movie showing how that rotten and dark cultural affect Patrick human being because deep inside of him, it still a good person when he decided not to kill his secretary Jean. Refers back to the title of the movie, American Psycho can this title be understood as the psycho of the whole society in American at that time?
WHAT I LEARNED/WHAT COULD HELP ME AFTER THIS ANALYSIS, RESEARCH
It shows me how we could use some simple action of a character to display the deep souls inside the character (the morning routine of Patrick Bateman showed he is obsessing with his appearance)
We don't need to actually "showed" the psychopath inside of the character, it can be shown by little details of the character action, speech and movement.
Acting is the key to demonstrate all the wanted messages
Through an object, it can show the deep story behind the society and also the character (for the movie it was the business card)
REFERENCING/INSPIRATION:
Robinson, P. (2020) Yuppies of the 1980s: The dawn of the 'American psycho', Film Daze. Film Daze. Available at: https://filmdaze.net/yuppies-of-the-1980s-the-dawn-of-the-american-psycho/ (Accessed: April 25, 2023).
Phê Phim (2021) American psycho: Nên Hiểu Cái Kết Như Thế Nào?, YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y04RXqjqeYo (Accessed: April 25, 2023).
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