sick patients

Eliane 2022-04-22 07:01:02

The title is "American Psycho", and many people focus on "psycho", but I think the word "America" ​​is also very important.

In the first half of the film, the male protagonist has not yet started to kill, but has shown some morbid behavior.

Compare business cards (consider the paper and fonts used), take a shower (use a wide range of bath products), exercise, compare restaurants to eat in, and even buy prostitutes for sex videos. The male protagonist maintains a subtle neuroticism in the crowd from the beginning. He uses a lot of material possessions to connect himself with the whole society, so as to pretend that he is no different from the average playboy. This is the "America" ​​in the symbolic sense. The value of human beings is maintained in the money game. After removing money and reputation, what personal value can the male protagonist leave behind?

So he had a nervous breakdown, and after killing people, he also tried to cover up the trouble caused by "playing too much", but he couldn't handle it himself. It can be seen from the sweat on his head when he compared business cards at the very beginning that he is a person whose psychological quality is not too high. So in order to cover up, or to vent the greater psychological pressure caused by killing, he chose to continue killing.

This film is talking about the mentally ill in the United States, but it is also talking about the symbolic "America", the mental illness of a country where moneyism and materialism are paramount.

The male protagonist can no longer cover up his sins, but there is this society, and others continue to cover up for him. At the end of the film, the male protagonist returns to the scene of the murder, and at this time the place has been renovated, and other people come to see the house. The strange expressions of the shopping guide are worth thinking about here. Does she know something, or doesn't know anything, just thinks the male protagonist is strange. But from the male protagonist's point of view, the world tells him that everything is over, even if he calls and tells others that he killed someone, even if he just imagines that he killed someone, it doesn't matter.

Because others have "forgave" him because of his social status, and the society will cover it up for him to maintain the "normal" appearance of money, reputation and status.

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Extended Reading
  • Dandre 2022-03-24 09:01:04

    The problem now is that I have watched this movie for ten years and I still remember countless details of the plot. But why did you leave the ending and didn't watch it? It would make no sense to return the dish if you woke up in a daze.

  • Kurtis 2022-04-24 07:01:01

    Ken Dansig says Mary Harlan's directorial thinking is fascinating. Indeed, the film is extremely bizarre in that she has created an image that is both repulsive and energetic and charming, and behind it is the mental illness of celebrity and emptiness, full of irony. The details are quite good, spelling business cards, bathing procedures, obsessive-compulsive disorder... Bell's performance is also wonderful, and he can interpret emotions with the most subtle changes in expressions on a crazy night.

American Psycho quotes

  • Patrick Bateman: Evelyn, I'm sorry. I just, uh... you're not terribly important to me.

  • [repeated line]

    Patrick Bateman: I'm not here.