Patrick Bateman explained: who he is and what the film says

Patrick Bateman explained: who he is

Bateman works at a Wall Street firm where no one seems to do much work. He and his colleagues look so similar they constantly mistake each other for someone else. His voiceover lists his morning routine and his possessions in loving detail, and gives no sign of an inner life.

What drives him is status and fear of being ordinary. The business card scene, in which he nearly falls apart because a colleague's card is more elegant than his, shows how fragile his identity is. His violence comes from the same place: rage at not being the best, and contempt for anyone below him.

Key scenes

The film's most famous scenes all pair horror with deadpan comedy.

• The business card comparison, which ends with Bateman sweating over a rival's card
• The murder of his colleague, called Paul Allen in the film and Paul Owen in the novel, preceded by a lecture on pop music
• The ATM that displays the message Feed Me a Stray Cat, which Harron has called the moment the film becomes less realistic
• His confession on the phone to his lawyer, which no one takes seriously

How Christian Bale built Bateman

Ellis and Harron wanted Bale from the start, though producers first pursued Leonardo DiCaprio. Bale took the part despite his agent warning him it would be professional suicide.

Harron has said Bale had watched Tom Cruise on David Letterman and was struck by his "very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes". Bale himself has said Bateman does have an arc: he goes "from psychopath to psychotic".

Did the murders really happen

At the end, Bateman confesses everything to his lawyer, who thinks it is a joke and says he had dinner with Paul Allen in London recently. The apartment where Bateman left bodies has been cleaned and is up for sale, and the estate agent tells him to leave. Many viewers conclude it was all in his head.

Harron has said she never intended that reading and that people kept leaving the film thinking it was a dream. She has said she got the emphasis wrong in the final scene. Turner has said they both disliked films whose twist is that everything was imagined. Turner's view is that real murders in some form are taking place.

What Bateman represents

The point is not whether a lawyer believes him. It is that a world obsessed with surfaces cannot see him at all. Nobody listens when Bateman tells them what he is, because no one is listening to anyone. The novel ends with the line "This is not an exit", and the film closes on Bateman admitting his confession has meant nothing.

Online, Bateman has had a second life as a meme, sometimes held up as an ideal of cold self-discipline. That reading ignores the joke at the heart of the film: he is a man so empty that even his crimes cannot make him matter.

Questions people ask