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American Psycho (2000)
What is it about Christian Bale that he can enter into the minds of truly psychotic characters and still remain convincing? In this satire (yes, that’s right, satire) of Wall Street in the late ‘80s, Bale plays Patrick Bateman, a wealthy investment banker by day, and a serial killer by night.
Things as trivial as Bateman’s jealousy of his peers’ business cards can set his killing instincts ablaze, a sign of the extreme material culture in which these yuppies are living. One exchange in particular sums up the entire scene in which Bateman finds himself: on meeting a pretty model in a bar, she asks Bateman what he does. He replies “murders and executions mostly”, to which she barely bats an eyelid. She assumes he has said “mergers and acquisitions”.
Bateman’s behaviour is so outlandish that one can’t help but laugh at his conduct during the murder scenes, as he exquisitely analyses various music albums from Huey Lewis and the News, to Genesis, to Whitney Houston. This is not a horror film, more a blackly comic satire that is occasionally farcical. None of his high-flying, three-piece-suit friends, in between making dinner reservations and throwing out derogatory comments about women, have any idea about Bateman’s night-time escapades, and that is the genuinely disturbing part.
American Beauty (1999)
This modern classic from Sam Mendes tells the story of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a 40-something year old man going through a rather eccentric mid-life crisis who becomes infatuated with the friend of his teenage daughter. He is not the only one facing a crisis, however; his wife, daughter and neighbours are all deeply unhappy beneath the façade of their suburban lives.
Mendes directs the film with an elegance that belies the wretchedness we are watching. After an opening that takes its cue from Sunset Boulevard, the camera allows us to see the nuances of misery that would only be apparent were we looking for them beyond the white picket fences of suburbia. But the camera also allows Lester, in particular, moments of joy, lingering over his blissful smile he lies in bed staring up at the ceiling, imagining the object of his infatuation covered in roses.
If there’s one thing that Spacey does better than anyone else it is frustration boiling beneath the lid of dull indifference, which makes him perfect for this role. So a stunningly good Mena Suvari as his daughter’s friend proves to be his wake-up call from the “coma” in which he has been living. Suvari is able to simultaneously convey innocence, sexiness and cunning, while Thora Birch as Lester’s daughter Jane brings just the right amount of teenage angst tinged with a hope of things to come.
After the 1950s suburban agony of Mendes’ Revolutionary Road (2009), one could argue that this was his modern-day answer. Worryingly, Mendes seems to suggest that nothing has changed for the better.
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004)
The Motorcycle Diaries tells the story of a pre-revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his travelling companion Alberto Granado (Rodrigo De la Serna) as they toured around South America in 1952. It was during this time that Guevara formed the ideas that eventually led to the Cuban Revolution, on which he embarked with Fidel Castro in 1953. But The Motorcycle Diaries paints a very different picture of Guevara from the one we are used to seeing in the famous photo that adorns so many students’ walls.
This is, at heart, a road movie; two friends who leave their native Argentina to learn more about Latin America, battling the weather, poverty and Guevara’s asthma. Alberto is the smooth-talking biochemist, and Guevara is the straight-talking medical student with an increasingly active social conscience. The film is intimately shot, basking in the beautiful landscapes of South America and exposing the harsh conditions in which the indigenous peoples were forced to live. The two lead performances from Bernal and De la Serna are outstanding; Bernal effectively portrays the change Guevara goes through, while on a journey both physical and emotional. As Guevara said in his diaries, the person who returned to Buenos Aries was very different from the one who left. And the rest, as they say, was history.
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