This is one of those stories where trying to determine what “really” happened is orthogonal to the purpose. It’s all a depiction.
When the writer and director of a movie explicitly states that she did not intend for her story to be ambiguous, I don’t think you’re allowed to claim it’s ambiguous. In the movie that she made, he really killed those people.
If you would rather he hadn’t, then you can say, “it would have been a better movie if it were the way I thought it was,” in much the same way that you might like a song better if it actually contained the lyric you mis-heard.
You’re relying too much on intentional-ism. Let’s say I say this to a police officer,
“I’m going to get some ice cream.”
I then go on a murderous rampage. Later on, the cops ask me why I did it, and I respond,
“I don’t know why, but I told you I would. When I say I’m going to get some ice cream, it means I’m going on a murderous rampage. Why didn’t you stop me?”
Well, the cops would laugh at me or shake their heads or whatever, because I really said, “I’m going to get some ice cream,” not, “I’m going on a murderous rampage.”
See, it doesn’t matter what I intend, it matters what I said. Film is the same way. Given the text (the film), it’s reasonable to say it’s in his head. Many of the cues–in structure, technique, and plot–she gave lead to that conclusion. Some of them do it very strongly and in the final moments of the film no less. It’s not the fault of the film viewer to just read what she presented. She doesn’t think it’s the film viewer’s fault either, because otherwise, she wouldn’t have said she failed in that regard.
This reminds me of The Royal Tenenbaums where the son played by Luke Wilson is standing in front of the mirror and says ‘I’m going to kill myself tomorrow.’ and then proceeds to open his wrists right then and there. For some reason the absurdity of the situation cracks me up a little even considering the inherent tragedy. Interestingly enough, it didn’t matter what Luke’s character said, but rather what he did. But that probably doesn’t pertain in the slightest.
But I disagree with JPR; I do think we’re allowed to read what we want into the movie without being told me are right or wrong, or at least I hope we are. Of course it’s all the rage on internet forums to declare a point of view wrong, or crazy, or stupid. Lots of people are pissed about Ridley Scott’s reinterpreting Blade Runner to show that Deckard was a replicant all along; I don’t think that means I have to agree. I can enjoy the movie in my own way, I own my interpretation of it. Even if the director of American Psycho (and I confess I haven’t seen it) considers the result a failure if it produces a certain point of view, I think we can discard that. Why not? If you enjoy it, if you got something from it because you see it your own way, well and good.
Now that I think about it, I have often wished David Lynch did commentaries for his movies to explain them a little – but deep down I’m glad he doesn’t. I believe he doesn’t want to step on our interpretations like this, from what I’ve heard in interviews. Now I’m rambling though, so I’ll just sign off here.
Allowed by whom? The moment you share a piece of art with other people, you lose control over the message. An audience member can claim things that are difficult to defend, and that’s something that he should be called on by other people if they feel differently. But you have a lot of latitude beyond what the director and the writer claim, and ultimately most of it is going to be straight opinion colored by taste and preconceived notions, and only a part of it the actual “facts” from the film.
Fun fact about me: I grew up in a tiny little backwoods town, amongst all that applies to that setting. One of the big lessons I learned from my parents, which continues to serve me well today, was this:
DRAGGED. DRAGGED, DRAGGED, DRAGGED.
Drugs are what we cooked up in the trailer right before it blew up.
H.
The people involved in making the movie were telling a story in which Patrick Bateman murdered a bunch of people. They can tell it badly enough that it’s not clear what happened, but that doesn’t mean they were telling an ambiguous story. They were telling a straightforward story in a way that confused people.
Sure JPR, but I don’t see how any of that rebuts anything Lizard King just said.
And it’s not even particularly difficult to defend in this case.
She wasn’t telling an ambiguous story, but that’s what she told when she was done. See the difference? What matters is what’s in the film. The director or writer can inform the discussion, but short of reshooting and recutting it, they can’t change it.
The worst example of this is the director’s commentary of Donnie Darko. I never thought the movie was the emo awesome standard that the cult following suggests, but listening to the commentary seriously hampered my enjoyment of that movie forever afterwards.
Yeah, artists should really just express themselves through their art (attaboy Scorcese). Too often they otherwise diminish it, because they’re just not as adept in explaining it (or even capable of it), and so much of artistic enjoyment is subtle and subjective.
WHAT THE
Oh man, Donnie Darko Director’s Cut w/commentary is the biggest mistake ever. It’s like watching a commentary of the first Alien film and listening to Ridley Scott explain how it’s all a big metaphor for Scientology and then he shows a deleted end scene where Ripley staggers out of a sound stage because the entire thing was a mindfuck and the events of film actually took place in the middle of the Mojave Desert in 1979.
There was a time in which I wanted to see the Donnie Darko director’s cut. That time is long past. (I love the original version, but everything I’ve heard about the DC says that it breaks the movie.)
If you watch the YouTube link provided earlier, she says that she meant it to be ambiguous, as it was in the book. Her statement was that she thought she hadn’t done a good job keeping it ambiguous and that she’d given too much emphasis to the possibility that it was all a dream.
Oh. So she does. I guess I got too caught up in what I was trying to say and forgot that it is totally inapplicable in the case of this movie.
I don’t think that changes the heart of what I was saying, though.
I finally got around to watching this. Does it make me a psycho if the most heart-wrenching parts of the movie to me were when the character killed (?) the bum and his dog, implied that poor wholesome Reese Witherspoon needed a boob job, and dismissively tossed the stuffed animal at the woman he was having an affair with?
I get way too sensitive in brutal crime dramas.
I don’t think American Psycho is a brutal crime drama.
Okay.
American Psycho is a black comedy to me, though I agree that the most affecting part emotionally is the dog yelping as Bateman kicks him to death.