I did a search, but couldn’t find an existing thread on this movie. I know it’s fairly old, but I was looking for a place to discuss it, and this seemed like the logical place.
Anyways, I’ve just finished watching it, and quite liked the film, though I’m still a bit confused by it’s ending. Here we’ve seen Bateman (Bat-Man…wierd) kill so many people, but towards the end he hallucinates about the ATM, blows up cop cars with a handgun (that’s a lucky ass shot), and finds Paul Allen’s apartment empty and the man himself apparently alive in London.
Now, obviously most of that is hallucination (including, I suspect, the exploding cop cars and the hooker who gets offed by a falling chainsaw). But it leaves me wondering: Just how much of the movie DID happen? Is the guy even really Patrick Bateman? Or is he really the guy at the beginning who happened to wear the same suits and glasses, and has everyone around him confused? Did he really kill anyone, ever?
I know it’s left intentionally ambiguous, but I thought it would make for interesting discussion to hear everyone’s personal theories/ideas on what happened in the movie, and what it all means (“Nothing.” ?).
Since I just watched the movie, I still need some time to let it gestate before I have some more independent thought of my own.
He’s Patrick Bateman, and he killed all those people. The ATM was a hallucination. Paul Allen is dead, as Patrick put an axe in his head. The guy confusing Patrick with Paul at the end was a running joke through the film as all the soulless yuppie scumbags dress, groom and behave so alike.
I was thinking that, given Bateman gets confused for the other guy who dressed the same (which is how he meets Allen).
That said, when he goes to Allen’s apartment it’s empty and for sale. At the end, the lawyer doesn’t confuse Patrick with Paul, he confuses Patrick with the other guy and says he had two dinners with Paul in London.
I mean, it’s still a legitimate theory and I’m not settling on any one view at this point, but those things did occur to me (shrug).
I think that was put in the movie as something to freak Patrick (and the viewer) out.
At the end, the lawyer doesn’t confuse Patrick with Paul, he confuses Patrick with the other guy and says he had two dinners with Paul in London.
Sorry, you’re right, but my point stands. These people can’t tell each other apart, and that was the joke, but Patrick was too panicky and flustered to see what was happening in that scene at the end.
One interesting thing about the film. During Willem Defoe’s encounters with Patrick, the director shot the discussions three times: once with Defoe’s character knowing that Patrick killed Paul, once where he thinks Patrick didn’t do it, and once where he’s not sure. The scenes in the final film were made up of fragments of each, so as to create uncertainty in the viewer. The film is full of stuff like that - to confuse and disorient the viewer as to what’s real and what’s not, as a parallel with Patrick’s state of mind.
Yah, that was sort of tickling my brain during those scenes. “Is he on to him? No he isn’t…Yah, he is! Wait…”
Cool.
Yeah, I’ll look into picking up the book sometime (if I ever find League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume I and can afford 4 months of late fees, ugh.)
Maybe I’m not remembering this correctly but I vaguely remember that at the end of the movie there’s a scene where Bateman’s secretary opens his diary and discovers that it’s full of violent doodles. That, coupled with the exploding cop car and so on, led me to assume that the whole thing was just a fantasy on Bateman’s part.
If you read the book and all you can remember are the essays on music then you are a very disturbed man. That, or your memory is trying to protect you. Man that book was nasty.
Yeah the book is… a bit much. I preferred the movie.
Regarding the ending - This question seems to come up a lot. People can be adamant on either side. I like to look at the conclusions that each theory presents:
Bateman didn’t kill anyone. He’s a crazy fucked up but harmless loon who imagines up this psycho reality and no one is the wiser.
Bateman is a seriously fucked up serial killer. His lust for blood is beyond any other charater in fiction (if you read the book). He is a soulless, vapid, supperficial yuppie that can get away with the deplorable shit that he does because the entire culture that he’s surrounded in is soulless, vapid & superficial. In Bateman’s society there is no morality there is only success: money, chicks, status, apartments, pop music, reservations, business cards. He gets away with it because society is so self aborbed, so identical, so insubstantial no one cares (murders & executions = mergers & acquisitions scene). Every attempt to bring REALTY to this vapid society is swept under the rug (empty apt scene).
I had the same impression, that it was all his little power fantasy at the end, but I read the book and consulted others and apparently it all did happen.
I don’t see how anyone can emphatically say that it did all happen (or that it didn’t, for that matter). Even in the book it’s left entirely and deliberately ambiguous and open to interpretation. The only certainty is that at some point he starts hallucinating and imagining that things are happening but there’s no way of knowing whether that point is right at the start of the book/film or somewhere near the end. Bateman is clearly psychotic but it’s unclear whether or not that psychosis has resulted in him dreaming about killing or actually killing. To some extent I don’t think it matters and I certainly don’t think it has any real impact on the piece’s impact as a satire. Everything that Jazar says in his second reading - from “He is soulless, vapid…” onwards - still applies, even if you agree with his first interpretation.
I think the book actually happened but the movie was fantasy. The book focuses much more on how superficial and self-involved the characters are, to the point where nothing really registers with them unless it impacts them directly (and even then, just barely). Half the time they can’t recognize their acquaintances or remember what happened to who. Almost no one has a meaningful conversation, it’s just people talking at each other rather than to. I got the impression that everything Bateman did was real, but no one could be moved to care and because of this he could go on murdering forever.
The movie hits on a lot of these points, but every supporting character seemed more grounded in reality, which made Bateman come off as less so, which is what leads me to think it was all in his head. He’s still crazy, but I doubt he acted on it.
I didn’t read much of the book, it was boring and trying way to hard to shock.
The movie however, I liked a lot. Its been forever since I’ve seen it, so I don’t feel like I could comment on it much. I just think you should all know I liked it.
