American Psycho - Film and Novel

I recently finished reading the book American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.  I also recently re-watched the film American Psycho.  My first reaction was that watching the movie was like reading the book in super fast forward.  Though the sequence of events is different, most of the major plot elements are there and save for a couple notable sequences, most of the dialogue and scenes do come directly from the novel. 

I don't mean for this post to degenerate into a clichéd discussion of whether the novel version or the film version of any given work is better.  Each have their strengths.  However, while I feel that identity is the most important theme of both versions of the work, the novel definitely emphasizes different aspects of the character of Patrick Bateman than the film, and this, unsurprisingly, is mostly due to the novel as a format.  

Some of the novel's important motifs, such as intense brand awareness, Bateman's latent racism, sexism, and homophobia, and Patty Winters are simply alluded to in the film, if at all. Furthermore, Ellis's tone, use of juxtaposition, and sentence structure work very well to convey Patrick Bateman's mental state; the film must use a different set of tools within a different artistic framework to accomplish these goals.  It does so mostly through Bale's performance.  His tone of voice, particularly in scenes where he discusses music, is particularly effective in conveying Bateman's inner desperation in contrast to his inner disarray.  

  

One last thing I'd like to note is the very linear structure of the film in contrast to the novel.  The reader senses that Bateman's life is a fog of drug use and mayhem [drug use, also, is much more prevalent in the novel] where five pages could describe five minutes or five months.  He is a wandering, aimless soul and thus the novel also wanders and takes many chronological hops, leaps, and jumps.  The film presents a much more coherent story arc.  Perhaps this is the necessary nature of a film meant for a commercial audience ["and therefore more satsifying in a narrower way."]

While this was the first novel by Bret Easton Ellis I've read, I greatly enjoyed it.  However, as is common with many well-written books, the film seems hollow when directly compared.  That is not to say that the film is bad.  However, in the sense that the film presents a particular interpretation of the novel and represents a radical shift in perspective [from Patrick Bateman's perspective in the novel to a more objective perspective in the film], the director's choices may disagree with one's own interpretation of the novel.  Anyway, I recommend that you both read the novel and see the film to reach your own conclusions.