Published By: Sougata Dutta

Details About American Psycho: A Crime Thriller Starring Christian Bale

Watch it but don't be like American Psycho…

American Psycho is now twenty years old, but this psychological thriller, based in hilarity and chock full of underlying societal context, is nevertheless as tremendous as it used to be then. This is particularly due to the amazingly spot-on overall performance from Christian Bale, and the confident direction of Mary Harron.

The film is exercising in management as much as it is about the loss of it. The primary character is all about his routines, his capability to maintain the whole thing in check, however there’s something festering underneath that he can’t quite preserve.

This is a film that honestly takes a picture of 80’s lifestyle and the societal needs for wealth and perfection. It’s really finished with a specific foray into what drives us and also, what destroys us. One of the things that makes this story so captivating is the reality that our psychopathic information is simply sick of it all, in spite of being engulfed in it himself. That division makes him crazy, and accordingly his disconnect from truth is sensible on these grounds.

Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman  

Patrick, a 26-year-old mergers and acquisitions turk, has a bottomless price account, a society fiancee, and a fetishistically luxe white-on-white designer apartment. The distinction with Patrick from the others, is that he's received a lot going on inside. He might also say, in that closing scene, that his confession doesn’t matter- however in this case, it’s everything. He’s in pain and striving for catharsis, even if it isn’t there, and that elevates him beyond a one-note psychopath.

He’s a Hollow Man. He occupies a cool swank demimonde where everything, from dinner reservations to muscle tone, is a popular image — a signifier of identity.

Relevance in Today's Generation

Resurging cultural significance is regularly exemplified by the use of memes, and Bale has truly passed through the meme therapy of late. But while memes can be amusing, recontextualizing Bateman as often as social media users have achieved in the #MeToo generation serves as an unlucky snub to the actual victims of men simply like Bateman. Perhaps the movie's cautionary component of society enabling and searching past unfavourable behaviours has turned out to be even more relevant as an end result of Internet culture. Toxic masculinity is ultimately under a microscope, which makes American Psycho even higher in this modern day and age. Hopefully, this will generate some perception as to why idolising Bateman and others like him is hazardous and trigger a wider aversion to doing so.