Weekend watch: ‘American Psycho’ and the art of depicting a monster

In a fleeting shot in Jithu Madhavan’s recently released Scene, a copy of Brett Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho can be spotted. Scene stars Suriya as a maverick cop investigating a series of murders that are being committed by Naslen’s chilling contract killer Eeswaran.

Eeswaran shares with American Psycho’s lead character Patrick Bateman a murderous indifference towards his victims as well as palpable joy in the act of killing. Otherwise, Scene bears no resemblance to American Psycho. The shot of the novel is probably as a visual joke, to encourage a hunt for parallels with it.

Ellis’s 1991 book is a masterful, unsettling study of psychosis in plain sight. Patrick Bateman is an investment banker in 1980s New York City who is addicted to his beauty routine, luxury brands and dining at the poshest restaurant in town. Bateman is also a serial killer. At least, that is what the first-person account by a highly unreliable narrator informs readers.

The book was controversial for the sickening detailing of Bateman’s treatment of his victims. Ellis was accused of being uncaringly misogynistic and also brutally satirical. Mary Harron’s screen adaptation, which she co-wrote with Guinevere Turner, picks a side – and in the process memorably subverts the book.

Harron’s 2000 film largely replaces the graphic violence in the novel with a comedy...

Read more