I was a naive progressive when I first watched it twelve years ago and didn't get it. Maybe I'll have a new appreciation for it now that my eyes have been opened to preformative woke neoliberalism and rise-and-grind work culture.
That was my experience. I moved to a very bougie "buttigueg 4 pres" area and started working an office job, gave the movie a whole new meaning lol. Plus the themes of unaccountable rich people and the political metaphor at the end are cool
Yeah I've never read the book, don't really know what I'm talking about, but as I understood it: one of the themes in the movie is that no one remembers who anyone is. That could just be a jab at how pointless they all are: they're all basically the same image-obsessed, shallow 80s stock broker maniac, just with slightly different business cards. But at the end of the movie, when Bateman is breaking down and is trying to get help from his lawyer, it gets a little more intense I guess. Bateman believes he's just gone on a killing spree, and is trying to tell his lawyer and get help. He tries to confess that he killed an associate, but people are convinced the man he killed is still alive ("So and so just saw him in London"). Basically, this inability of people to tell others apart saves Bateman, ostensibly.
However, we're also shown a scene where Bateman's secretary is looking through his day planner, and it's just an incoherent bunch of childish depictions of murder and torture. That combined with the outlandishness of the final showdown with the cops (and some previous wackiness) make a the case that Bateman is an unreliable narrator, that the events shown in the film weren't outrageous because the rich can get away with murder, but because he's just mentally ill. However, exactly how much is hallucination isn't clear.
So as the viewer is considering how much of the film depicts the unaccountable rich, and how much is just a hallucination, we're shown Reagan on the TV lying through his teeth. And around this time we get the final monologue from Bateman. He basically realizes that even in confessing what he's done, he can get no release, that ultimately because of his position and wealth, this central question of the film (what happened) doesn't even matter. If he's insane, and killed no one, or if everything happened exactly as he imagined it, the result is the same: he stays rich, he keeps his position, the world moves on. The men around him are commenting on how good Reagan is at lying, and presenting himself as this friendly old man. The film could be showing IMO that the idea of one man wreaking havoc and killing and breaking the law and never being held accountable isn't as outrageous as it seems, just look at what Reagan got away with.
I was a naive progressive when I first watched it twelve years ago and didn't get it. Maybe I'll have a new appreciation for it now that my eyes have been opened to preformative woke neoliberalism and rise-and-grind work culture.
That was my experience. I moved to a very bougie "buttigueg 4 pres" area and started working an office job, gave the movie a whole new meaning lol. Plus the themes of unaccountable rich people and the political metaphor at the end are cool
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Yeah I've never read the book, don't really know what I'm talking about, but as I understood it: one of the themes in the movie is that no one remembers who anyone is. That could just be a jab at how pointless they all are: they're all basically the same image-obsessed, shallow 80s stock broker maniac, just with slightly different business cards. But at the end of the movie, when Bateman is breaking down and is trying to get help from his lawyer, it gets a little more intense I guess. Bateman believes he's just gone on a killing spree, and is trying to tell his lawyer and get help. He tries to confess that he killed an associate, but people are convinced the man he killed is still alive ("So and so just saw him in London"). Basically, this inability of people to tell others apart saves Bateman, ostensibly.
However, we're also shown a scene where Bateman's secretary is looking through his day planner, and it's just an incoherent bunch of childish depictions of murder and torture. That combined with the outlandishness of the final showdown with the cops (and some previous wackiness) make a the case that Bateman is an unreliable narrator, that the events shown in the film weren't outrageous because the rich can get away with murder, but because he's just mentally ill. However, exactly how much is hallucination isn't clear.
So as the viewer is considering how much of the film depicts the unaccountable rich, and how much is just a hallucination, we're shown Reagan on the TV lying through his teeth. And around this time we get the final monologue from Bateman. He basically realizes that even in confessing what he's done, he can get no release, that ultimately because of his position and wealth, this central question of the film (what happened) doesn't even matter. If he's insane, and killed no one, or if everything happened exactly as he imagined it, the result is the same: he stays rich, he keeps his position, the world moves on. The men around him are commenting on how good Reagan is at lying, and presenting himself as this friendly old man. The film could be showing IMO that the idea of one man wreaking havoc and killing and breaking the law and never being held accountable isn't as outrageous as it seems, just look at what Reagan got away with.
deleted by creator