The character Christian Bale said he never liked: “I like nothing about him”
Being an actor doesn’t mean that someone has to be in love with everything that happens onscreen. The whole point of the cinematic experience is to heighten seemingly everyday activities and make them seem operatic, and that gets a little harder for someone to grasp when they are making a fantasy series or a superhero movie that involves people voyaging to different planets. Everything can still work as long as the character is grounded, but Christian Bale knew that it was fine to make something that was over-the-top and reprehensible from time to time.
Then again, Bale was the last person to give a shit about what people thought of him during his films. He always viewed his role in front of the camera as being a chameleon, and if you look at the transformation in how looked in a movie like The Machinist compared to Vice, it would be enough for many doctors to want to study him for concern of his physical well-being.
Most people might train for films like that, but Bale was more interested in turning himself into a character, even if it meant making him look ridiculous. If you think about it, his role as Batman in Christopher Nolan’s iteration of ‘The Caped Crusader’ can get unbelievably goofy when he doesn’t turn the growl off, but it serves the story whenever he’s looking to intimidate his enemies.
If Batman was meant to instil fear into everyone who has laid eyes on him, though, Patrick Bateman is more terrifying because of how cold and clinical he could be. The thought of a serial killer working on Wall Street might be inherently funny, but the fact that he manages to hide all of his heinous acts over the guise of someone who lives a lavish lifestyle is more threatening when things go haywire.
Compared to every other unreliable narrator in cinema, Bateman is another level of unhinged. Outside of being prone to rage and a brilliant sense of sarcasm, he is still the darkest character that Bale has ever put together, especially when all of the enthusiasm drains from his eyes when he starts stalking his next prey.
Although some people see it as an actor’s job to put a piece of themselves into every character, Bale was quite content to leave Bateman where he was and never touch on him ever again, saying, “I like nothing about him. I mean, he’s a completely unredeeming character. I didn’t attempt to make him sympathetic at all. But at the same time, he finds himself in so many ridiculous situations and reacts in such a ridiculous manner. I would not want to be at a table with him eating, but I would like to eavesdrop on his conversation.”
That ridiculousness is also half the reason why American Psycho is so entertaining. The book itself is already fairly sick and can be more than a little bit nauseating to read, but looking at how Bale and Mary Harron put the film together, they almost treat the whole thing like a black-comedy version of slapstick whenever he goes after someone, especially with Huey Lewis playing in the background.
Because if there was none of that humour and everything from the book was intact, there would probably have to be something stronger than an X-rating to describe it. Everything about Bateman is wrong, and no one in their right mind would ever want to consider themselves his friend, but it’s hard to see single frames of him running naked through a hotel corridor with a chainsaw and not find it a little bit funny.
