Post by No Personality on Mar 18, 2010 7:29:59 GMT -5
I swear I never thought about it before - because when I really started this board and when it comes to ProBoards, you really just have to find a name that no one has used yet, so no I really didn't give much thought to the name... and when I say before I mean, before I picked this movie to talk about... but I may have sort of taken "Movies from Hell" from the somewhat famous Mutant Reviewers from Hell site/website. Well, I used to know some of those people. No, I never reviewed for them. Obviously not, I'm far too long-winded. I was on their message board. And we talked movies. And... well, they can have some radically small minds when it comes to movies. I know- look who's talking, right? The guy who gave 2 stars to Re-Animator and John Carpenter's The Thing. But those are isolated incidents. I'm just being honest. They're not what I feel are the essential, ultimate sci-fi horror movie or 80's zombie film. There are better ways to make a statement in a serious movie. Or better silly movies. Or better hybrids of the two.
Anyway, based on my experiences talking with those people... well, they like to react strongly to movies. And sometimes a couple of them talk as though their point of writing for the site is to insult the very same trends and sources that gave us Cult Film. I mean, beside the fact that they don't have any John Waters reviews other than Cry Baby (in my opinion, one of his worst films - and in this case that is not a compliment), there seems to be very little open mind whatsoever for low budget 80's horror unless it's a very popular slasher film or unless it has Bruce Campbell in front of the camera. I like him too, to a degree- but he's not my God or anything. He's the God of what could be called the straight guys' guide to cult film. The same person who might put John Carpenter's The Thing in a list of their Top 10 favorite horror films. Suffice it to say The Thing isn't even in my Top 100 (though not because it didn't have an occasional moment of brilliance or two- rather because I consider it overall a disappointment).
I hope by now you're getting a picture of what I'm trying to tell you about these so-called Mutants. At best, they're video buffs. My mother was a kind of video buff. Neither one of us liked Re-Animator. But we both liked Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage. The Mutant Reviewer head reviewer, Justin, did not. In fact, he even went so far as to mock it because of its 80's trends. I believe he complained about colored neon lights. Oh my! I happen to think that's one of the most charming things about 80's horror. Certainly when you compared it to the color-phobic shit we're offered now. And considering how insanely stylish all our commercials and TV shows are... why is what we're given as horror this millennium trying to go back to the gritty 1970's and rob us of style- which now new low-budget movies can freaking afford since a major Hollywood studio (or Lionsgate, any difference these days?) will eventually snap it up?
They also hate Gregg Araki, who I love. Of course, they've only seen one of his films, The Doom Generation- which they call the worst movie ever made. I haven't seen it yet (been too busy with this project). I tried to discuss him and the merits of his films (I've never seen a Gregg Araki movie I didn't like, not yet)... but all of it fell on intensely dead ears. These people outright refused to listen. Naturally, they know very little about truly outrageous cinema. The lack of reviews for gay cult classics - and the lack of what I can tell is a gay reviewer - is wholly symbolic of an entire missing voice from their would-be Mutant collective. And now, well for years now, the kind of film they feature / discuss has shifted so far into the mainstream, it's pretty pathetic. They never had much backbone to begin with, although sometimes they're funny. But though they started with some really interesting movies and reviews, it's like they've lost their taste for films out of the ordinary.
The point of bringing up my mother, other than the fact that I'm proud of her for finding anything in Brain Damage to like and for being less grossed-out by Society than I was (I guess most mothers wouldn't be, ya know?
), is to say that - anyone can be a video buff. Just rent. Rent lots of movies starring Patrick Swayze (r.i.p., you beefy hunk) and produced / written by John Hughes... well, that's as far as I care to go with that. I have a little trouble getting into the mind of a mainstream-cult afficionado. They rarely have a history of renting something like Meet the Feebles or Pink Flamingos just to test their gag reflex. Oh, and... Brazil of all things is a movie they have anticipatory dread about seeing. I'm not saying these guys are stupid or anything. We just really come from different worlds. They went to college, I didn't. In a college atmosphere, I'm told people are always sort of looking around to see what you like. Maybe this is where these folks first hooked up and had the idea to form their MRFH.
My general opinion of college kids is that they make a career out of being so full of a kind of higher attitude about film, they become removed from the movies they watch. They lose a sense of pure entertainment value. Or entertainment value related to what they're watching. Which has nothing to do with pleasing the mainstream. I've noticed some college kids only care about what the mainstream think, apart from a small handful of favorite films that they will call guilty pleasures if they have to to keep people from insulting them for their taste. Do they get this attitute from their professors? From each other? I don't care which, the fact is - they change. And I haven't met one of these people online who I think have a healthy attitude. More likely than not, they actually get off on telling you how every movie from the 60's, 70's, 80's have dated so much that no one enjoys them anymore. Even that doesn't make me give anymore of a fuck what the mainstream thinks.
The Mutant Reviewers from Hell aren't the biggest fans of American Psycho (though "Andie" says she liked it in a review for another movie). No surprise, there, really. Like I tried to imply above, they're more the Spielberg and Lucas crowd. Less art, more: fast-pace, big-budget, boring heroes, one-liners up-the-whazoo. Sorry, Steven (I actually loved The Color Purple, but that's the only Spielberg film I can admit to having feelings for). Art via technology and only the best technology cutting edge 1970's big-budget Hollywood could provide. Although, that's merely what I think when I see scenes from Star Wars in passing, when flipping through the channels when I rarely watch TV. Maybe Star Wars was made on a low budget. Either way, 20th Century Fox sure made it look like it was an overly expensive turkey. Perfect viewing for Thanksgiving - my least favorite holiday (other than the often T&A-flaunting celebrations for the 4th of July).
The MRFH also have an annoying habit of comparing this film to the movies of David Fincher. I'm not a David Fincher fan. I don't have any real reason to hate him. But, to say the least- he's of a radically different breed than horror film directors. Or directors who decide they want to make a horror film. A smart horror director certainly doesn't hire Brad Pitt or Gwyneth Paltrow to be in their cast. Mary Harron who directed this film thinks along the same lines as I am right now, and was always against the studio wanting to give the Patrick Bateman role to Titanic's Leonardo DiCaprio. Popular mainstream actors with a prolific series of roles in dramas make very bad choices to stick in a horror film (Jodie Foster being history's greatest exception to the rule - though the reason she's so extraordinary and made such a great surprise choice for The Silence of the Lambs is because she's no stranger to deeply mysterious films- 1976's exquisite creeper The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane).
The funniest thing about the Mutant Reviewers' page on American Psycho is... well, allow me to quote:
"The first reason why American Psycho is so excruciating is that it requires today's audience to recall the 80's Yuppie mindset, in order to satirize it in a dark way. Yes, there's nothing like a satire twenty years too late. You might as well make a riveting exposé of the 70's energy crisis for all the relevance that it'd make on people today."
Oooh, feel the burn. No, admittedly, that's very clever and would certainly be a good insult were it not kind of clueless. I'll be kind for a moment and throw Justin here a bone: maybe he wrote this scathing review prior to George W. Bush's inauguration as our 43rd U.S. President in 2001.
No, I'm not going to turn this into a history lesson (again, me-weak on technical historical information). It's just a hard fact of life, American Psycho was unwittingly ahead of its' time. Not in detailing a return to the decadent soulless lifestyle of the Wall Street elite set. That's just a front. Inside the suits, there is a mindset at work in this film. A fear of expressing dissenting views from an established majority-opinion, a subtle sense that the punishment for doing so will include social isolation, characters taking out their masculine aggressions verbally on other people while trying to control their image in relaxed social settings, and the desperate need to conform to the ruling classes and a feeling of wanting all the things the "haves" have. All these things have polluted the middle 8 and a half years of this last decade. In a way, predictions this movie made that have come to pass in the world we actually live in. Sorry, Justin, but American Psycho is relevant today!
This movie is all about image. Both the image of themselves controlling people have to have people believe and the weaknesses they want people not to see. And how the political attitudes of the time can have a powerful influence over the relationship members of the upper class have with each other. In some cases, they're outright given the power to do whatever they want to the rest of us. It's become well-known that in the new-millennium, rich people account for maybe 1% of the population of America. That might not actually be true but it's the number that's been regurgitated through the media. And it feels hella accurate. This movie is kind of about how their interests come first. But... from the inside. Their lifestyle. It's not just the competition they have with each other, though that's a big part of it. It's also a disturbing document of how the rest of the population fall in-line with the government-class's mindset. The one they sell to us. In the form of controlled images, commercials, and illusions of healthy lifestyles.
That's what American Psycho is able to evoke even though its' source material focused directly on the New York City rich and popular downtown trends. And the fact that its' psycho, Patrick Bateman, bares so many frightening similarities to Bush. Like Bateman, W.'s daddy once owned the company (the United States). And that was the key that opened the doors to him getting ahead in business (politics, you'll find these days the two are inseparable as a self-governing system of interests). Then, there's his extreme impotence in failing to achieve any form of personal success, other than being related to someone many people considered successful. This ends up being the catalyst for almost all the horror and violence in the film. That coupled with the message he receives that he's worth nothing if he isn't made to look powerful by something he wears or uses as a front to keep people from recognizing how pathetic he is. There's more W-isms in Bateman, but I'll wait.
What's both scary and incredibly fascinating about this movie is its' message of apathy. How no character in the film cares about or notices anything extreme because they're so intensely and amazingly preoccupied with themselves. And how far the movie ends up going to make the point that someone in the machine of the 80's had to lose their grip on reality completely but also not be able to escape the repetitive cycle of empty pursuits. Sort of like a nightmare, the story structure of the film eventually gets tossed out of the window and only the concept of popular apathy remains. The images of roomfuls of people just being there. Because it was only important to get the reservation, like a backstage pass at a concert, that means you belong there and are good enough to be any one of the bodies standing in the room. It's never important to the ruling food chain of people here to have a soul or a heart. Or any sense of morality.
Patrick Bateman is also a character that represents a kind of ambivalence, and this is where the movie gets its' sense of humor. Part of Bateman sees himself as an exterminator who hates yuppies, though they are also the only people he knows and are his only friends. He wants to kill them all, pretty much. And he starts to. But when he starts with the man he sees as his arch nemesis, "Paul Allen," he does the Heathers, The Talented Mr. Ripley thing of trying to assume Paul's identity. Because Paul has a better apartment than him and gets the best accounts in the company. Bateman's friends are also jealous of Paul, and frustratingly in his world, all his friends are more successful than he is, though like him they're not as successful as Paul. He hates the kind of person Paul is and kills him, though it appears what he really wanted was to be Paul- not to get rid of what he represented. His status and privilege. And the snotty attitude he had that irritated Patrick when they went out to dinner together.
Yes, men go out to lunch and dinner together a lot in this movie. Maybe they still do in the business world- I wouldn't know (my father was a truck driver, the only time he wore a suit was to maybe one funeral). But in the 1980's I doubt any of them felt there was any kind of sweet or gay vibe to the routine. Or fun. Again, it was more about the importance of reservation. Where your name in terms of success was able to take you. Again, like a key. What doors of the city could it open? Symbols of status. They all want to take each other to Dorsia, though nobody in the movie is ever seen eating there. That's how exclusive this place is. Perhaps it's standing-in for Heaven. You know what I mean? They can't get in or, if they've ever been, they can't prove to each other that they've been there. Because... they have no souls? Robots aren't supposed to have souls, and these guys are definitely robots. Which is why I'm glad there isn't a bigger deal made of the rampant homosexuality in the story.
Here, it's really implied that everything these younger men do is driven by something anti-social, to show off like a stereotype of gay men. In that way, it should be offensive. But it's just done to mock the lifestyle. To say that for all its' tough coldness and wannabe-opulence, it's nothing more than clothes and beauty products blended to create... well, metrosexuality. Another thing this movie predicted about the new millennium! A fashion and lifestyle trend born out of the desire to look perfect. But also a trend that makes them look less masculine. Maybe that's one of the reasons they do so much cocaine, to blind them to the potential fact that even they don't like their lives. Behind the all-male lunches and dinners, they're all having affairs each others' fiancees and girlfriends. Which you almost get the impression is because they think the boyfriend of the woman they're fucking is more successful than they are. Like subconsciously, this is a way to even the score.
Because, really- they are so obsessed with each other's status, they kind of want to hurt each other. Almost because they know they can never play together in the bedroom. I know that's making more out of this than might be there in the eyes of some. But this is after all based on a book written by a gay man and adapted into a screenplay by a lesbian. Why not? Either way, it's still about a class of people who were so serious about things that are in fact so trivial, they became a joke. At least being gay would give them some depth. In reality, their lifestyle had a sexuality of its' own. Probably why it's been termed "metrosexuality." It suggests homosexuality but is more Asexual than that. What more than suggests homosexuality here is how damn much like foreplay all this "boys will be boys" behavior is. And how close the guys get to the bedroom without actually going to bed.
They wine and dine each other in public. They suggest, to get a good table at a restaurant, one of them might give a maitre-d a blow job. They flirt with each other during business-card exchanges. They box with each other (offscreen, sadly); the ultimate man-to-man foreplay - I can't believe anyone finds anything about the sport straight, especially if you agree with Tim "the Tool Man" Taylor's explanation that it's more of a science about avoiding being punched rather than, in fact, punching someone else (the gear and exhibition of the act of sparring with another man being all the more attention-calling). And one scene suggests while drunk they would actually go to each other's apartment and sit around on their couch doing nothing, even though they're all very busy and allegedly successful men who work on Wall Street. If they weren't spending this much time together with the intent to sleep with their male peers- why weren't they out with a woman?
The answer to that question is because they were just showing off and merely want to prove they are better than their friends. But I think there's a lot to be said for, at the very least, Patrick's telling the detective handling Paul's disappearence that Paul was probably gay. And the guy buys it. In the story, the detective is supposed to be Patrick's same-age and share a great deal of the same interests and personality qualities as Patrick and his friends. So, if he doesn't question Paul's or Patrick's homosexuality (they of course were the guys who were alone in Patrick's apartment together, with no sign of Paul leaving until they at least made-out on the couch), it's like- "oh, I understand." Meaning, he understands personally. As in, whatever experience Paul has in being gay, Patrick and the detective have the same. If what Paul does makes him "a closet homosexual," so is what they do.
This could very well be another manifestation of the theme of apathy. But that itself could, in the case of certain characters, be a front. For any secrets. They flaunt drug use and drinking in each others' faces, so it's not that. It could be their homosexuality. Or, it could be their fear that they're not as successful as their friends. Though, apart from wanting to be the most successful, nobody cares. If these men are ever able to achieve the glory of one-upping each other, there's no afterglow. No ability to bask in the light. They care for maybe a minute or two, and then- it's onto a group lunch or business meeting. And then later, during a conversation, you might catch a glimpse of anger in the form of frustration. I'm tempted to say some of their anger is due to their inability to talk as a group about their feeling of inadequacy in their business lives. Or to be able to agree: who has the best business card? And that of course, is because- they all want to have the best business card.
What I admire most about this film is I think what everyone who hates it hates about it. It takes the empty shell of a person the character of Bateman is inside, brings it outside, and uses it to make the entire world in the story into what he is. A hollow clone. Because, damn it, that's what the new-millennium feels like. One big controlled image to sell us ideas that aren't true for most people. Yes, the film is extremely vague. And plays with movie conventions like the paranoid criminal (the paranoid criminal is trademark to a great many movies about serial killers) instead of trying to take you the viewer on a ride. But it's a horror film, not a thriller. Though I can see where that would still turn people off. It's a horror film that lacks atmosphere (my favorite horror element), or should I say(?)- substitutes it for extraordinary intelligence.
The purpose of doing things this way is actually not to be entertained by or admire the cold, lifeless quality to Patrick Bateman. When you know this guy is just like someone like George W. Bush, though he might not be an exciting character (that kinds of goes with the territory of being a status-driven killer: DUH!)- he's one worth watching. And one all the more suited to be the main character in a horror film about murdering people to make yourself feel like a powerful man. There is some stiffness to American Psycho. That might lead some to think that it's trying to rely on irony to do all its' work. The movie isn't exactly about the rampage of a tough guy. That would be sorely missing the point. Nor is it really an attempt to destroy the image of or get revenge on the culture of the 1980's which gave us one of America's most dangerous madmen: Ronald Reagen.
Everyone knows the 80's were hollow and absurdly materialistic. What good would it have done to try and turn the character Patrick Bateman into The Terminator or something like that? For a few escapist thrills, a little in-movie vigilante justice? I know that's not what the nay-sayers are suggesting, exactly. Maybe it's in the back of their minds, though. To make something a credible threat, part of it has to be given the killer edge without considering how to excite the audience. In this case, it's more potent when it's left cold. There's no need to heat up a killer who is a robot. Even if you think in the book he was a human being underneath it all. A movie can do whatever it wants to. No, I'm not saying the movie over the book will always make the right decision. But sometimes I feel like all this "the movie sucks because it's not like the book" bullshit is the people saying it expressing the opinion that they would hate it if they were the author. But it's not our job as the film goers to judge a movie for not being faithful to a book. Movies abide by an entirely different set of rules.
If people are bored by the movie and think Bateman wasn't exciting enough, they need to realize that making him more human would allow us the chance to sympathize with the movie's chosen target. Maybe even justifying it on some level. It actually amazes me when people see something that don't really understand and feel compelled to call it boring. Maybe during the Clinton era (yeah- that's when it was made), this film would have been missing the mark. But it has an all-new ring of truth to it in these sick and dreary times where we might as well all be wiped out via some quasi-religious plague or something. As for movies, it's best the movie doesn't try to find a quick solution to a problem when most ambitious movies don't try to solve problems at all (I'm thinking now about the defenses people will use for movies they think people are short-changing).
An ending that feels like an ending would be like trying to resolve the problem of the 1980's. But in history, it turns out the "no exit" ending was perfect after all. Because it suggests that we're stuck in a very nasty maze. And because, the 1980's sure fucking repeated itself on us- didn't it?! The movie is professional at feeling hopeless. And that's what the world feels like right now. "No exit" couldn't be more appropriate. To whatever you feel it applies to. The economy. Corporate control of elections / which side is going to win by rigging it this year(?). Widespread human apathy to sadness and tragedy. This movie seems to seek evening up the "death of one" versus the "death of millions." Both here are made to feel like just another statistic. Is that profound in any way? No. But when you think about it- it's your whole life with no point to it. That's scary enough.
