I love this movie mainly for the over-exaggeration of the character, Patrick Bateman.
He is built up to be the ‘perfect’ psychopath even through the beginning of the movie. In the first bar scene, Bateman just announces to the bartender that he is going to kill her. He does so so brazenly and loud because he knows that no-one will hear him. Â Throughout the movie, he tells people that he is with how he is crazy and likes to kill people for fun; ‘I like to dissect girls. Did you know I’m utterly insane?’ From my research in to psychopathy, this is a trait of a psychopath, to just blurt out such things, and then to deny them later.
He cares too much about his outer-appearance, probably because he has no ‘inner appearance’, and this is shown by his over-the-top morning routine. In fact, as he is peeling off his face mask (as though his outer layer is just a mask), he says ‘There is an idea of Patrick Bateman, some outer abstraction, but there is no real me’ and ‘I simply am not there’. He acknowledges one of his traits a s a psychopath; the inability to experience emotion, the lack of any kind of psychological state that can be considered human.
Everything that he does is for his own pleasure. He tells his secretary to dress differently as though she is just something to look at. He mentions that he thinks his fiancee is cheating on him, but then says that he doesn’t care as he is cheating on her. He is on the phone with is mistress as porn is playing in the background.
He is very passive about his lies. He does not consider that he could be caught, because everyone is so absorbed in their own material lives that they turn a blind eye to everything else around them. For example, when he takes his mistress to Barcadia, he tells her that it is Dorsia, holding the menu with the name across it right in front of her. He knows that she is too absorbed in being in a fancy place and being so dosed up on drugs to even notice that they are in the wrong place.
I really like the way that Mary Harron has really thought about how she is going to make the character of Bateman more psychopathic than an actual psychopath. It makes him less hateable and more of an intrigue. I found that the main part about the movie that I liked was the whole absurdity of Bateman’s character. He is unlike anyone that could really exist (especially unnoticed) in the real world. So when other characters say that Bateman is a ‘dork’, this statement seems impossible, as the viewer is so drawn-in by him. This makes us see the other characters as mean and as though they misunderstand Bateman.
“Give him quirks. What makes a person (and a character) individual are their unique little habits and mannerisms. One good method for coming up with fitting quirks is to look at the people around you.” Becca Puglisi – Beyond the Cliche: How to Create Characters that Fascinate
I have yet to read the book, but I understand that Harron really made sure to over-exaggerate the character of Bateman. She has managed to create such a fascinating character, yet she has not followed the kind of idea that Puglisi has written about as in the quotation above. Puglisi says that a character ought to resemble the people about you in order to draw our attention, yet the character of Bateman is unlike anyone that we know. This goes to show that sometimes it is the unique and absolutely outrageous that also can draw our attention.
I wish to create a character that really draws people in. They may not like the character if the character were a real person, but there would be something about this character that really intrigues the viewer. They would find themselves siding with this character, perhaps unwittingly. They would feel as though this character may be someone that they might want to know.
Gabriella Passerello 
Leave a comment