Christian Bale's 'American Psycho' turns 25: 'Society has become much worse now,' says director Mary Harron

One of Christian Bale's most celebrated films turned 25 on Monday. Having gained cult status in a span of two decades, American Psycho got more attention after Bale got more attention after he took on the new iteration of the Caped Crusader in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins (2005). The fact that a film where some female characters are subjected to extreme violence by Bale's character, Patrick Bateman, was adapted by two women (and directed by one of them) may have come as a surprise to many.

Director Mary Harron, who co-wrote the screen adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel of the same name with Guinevere Turner, discussed in an interaction with Letterboxd Journal how the film is perceived today in the wake of Donald Trump's re-election and how it continues to be treated with a measure of hostility even though its darkly satirical edge was lately embraced by many, especially young women. Harron and Turner didn't, however, expect the film to be adopted by "Wall Street bros" and wondered whether they failed as filmmakers due to this reason.

“It was about a predatory society, and now the society is actually, 25 years later, much worse," she observes, adding, "The rich are much richer, the poor are poorer."

Before the film eventually fell into the laps of Harron and Bale, the adaptation went through considerable trouble trying to fetch the right director-actor combo. Martin Scorsese came close to directing it. Leonardo DiCaprio came close to starring in it. The latter, however, was persuaded by journalist and feminist Gloria Steinem not to take it so as not to alienate his female fans, as per Eric Saks' documentary American Psycho: From Book to Screen.

Drawing the parallels to Trump, who was looked at as a role model in the story by Bale's Patrick Bateman character, Harron says she would never have imagined that there would be a time when "racism and white supremacy" is celebrated, remarking, "which is basically what we have in the White House."

Recalling the backlash the film and the book got from feminist groups back then and how that attitude changed significantly later, with younger women warming up to the ideas presented in the book penned by its openly gay author, Harron says a lot of people missed the "clear critique" inherent in the book of not just "masculine behaviour" but a critique of "society, of the world of exploitation and consumption and greed and reduction of people … So I’m really delighted that young women have started liking it.”

As for the gay elements in the book, Harron explains that it was very clear to her and her gay co-writer that it was a "gay man’s satire on masculinity" and that "Ellis being gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals among these alpha males, which is also true in sports, and it’s true in Wall Street, and all these things where men are prizing their extreme competition and their ‘elevating their prowess’ kind of thing. There’s something very, very gay about the way they’re fetishizing looks and the gym.”

Interestingly, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (Challengers, Call Me By Your Name), who is openly gay, is circling a contemporary reboot, with a script by Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Bourne Ultimatum).

American Psycho is available to stream on Prime Video for Indian users.

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