The purpose of this paper is to point out the stylistic details of the film American Psycho directed by Mary Harron. Yet, not only pointing out the four aspects which are Mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound is enough, but; furthermore, analyze them in order to determine their function in the selected scene. The chosen scene is the “Ax-Raincoat Scene,” this scene is the one in which Patrick Bateman, after a meal with Paul Allen, takes Allen to his apartment and chops him to death with an ax. In this scene we can see Patrick Bateman’s psychopathic behavior to its top, a composition between an extreme good taste for music and the meanings of it, good taste for the finest things and total violent savagery or more technically, in Robert D. Hare's words “a intraspecies predator who uses charm, manipulation, intimidation, and violence to control others and to satisfy his own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, he cold-bloodedly takes what he wants and does as he pleases, violating social norms and expectations without the slightest sense of guilt or regret." With that being said, there is no need for further description of the scene since is one of the most important and noticeable in the film, there is no chance for confusion. Following to this brief clarification, it is necessary to cut to the chase and start talking about what is important for the purpose of this paper.
Mise-en-scene:
This scene is set in Patrick Bateman’s apartment in two places, the living room mainly and the bathroom. In the living room we see that everything is most black and white, the walls and the pictures on it. And also everything in the apartment is in perfect alignment; every line in the apartment is either vertical or horizontal, very sharp lines. On the living room we see that all the furniture is covered with white blankets, and in the place where Allen is seated the floor is covered with newspapers, and the articles are all in line, we can notice because all the picture on them are positioned in the same way, and apparently, they are all articles of the style or fashion section of the newspaper, the audience is able to know this because Allen’s says it. Furthermore, in every joint of the news paper sheets we see grey duck tape in a shape of a cross; announcing from the very beginning of the scene that Patrick has decided that that will be Allen’s grave. This is used to characterize Bateman as a person that is anal and thinks things in advance; he prepares for action and is very fashion oriented.
Is very important to notice that we can not se the faces of the people on the pictures in the apartment, because this is a metaphor to what is just happening and what happens everyday in Bateman’s world, a world of pretensions and style were people don’t know each other’s faces even tough they work together. The composition and design of the scene are as his apartment lines, symmetric. As a brief note, and to reaffirm Patrick’s cruelty we notice that the ax he uses to kill Allen is not sharp (and a beautiful ax by the way), very shiny with an oak wood handle, making it more painful for the victim in every strike because, it not only cuts, but hammers in every blow.
In this scene there are two types of lighting, one used on the living room and another used on bathroom. On the living room a two-point lighting is used, that is a key light and a fill light, yet the lighting used is very soft and diffused, we see very light shadows if we see any, the area is very clear and lighted. In the same way, in the bathroom the lighting remains two-point, but is darker than in the living room, we also see that when he starts to put on his raincoat, we cannot see his eyes because there is a straight horizontal shadow that covers them, this is used to make the audience feel uncertain of his feelings. Then he takes a few steps closer to the mirror and we see his face with an incredible serenity and determination, finally as he is going out of the bathroom we slightly see that his shadow precedes him, we understand that his dark side has taken the command and is about to take action. This type of lighting is used because even though he is about to murder someone, the important thing is that we see that he doesn’t break a sweat, is very relaxed and sharp looking. And in the bathroom obviously is darker because here is where he prepares himself for a dark action. Another reason for this type of lighting is to create the effect that is the apartment lighting what we see because is at night, it is used to give the scene a realistic touch.
Allen during the whole scene doesn’t move really much, he is just so drunk that he is just seated there without a clear understanding of what is really happening he is just a very naive, happy and stupid good drunk guy. On the other hand, Bateman is in constant movement, with a lot of confidence, because he is in his domain and is obviously in full knowledge of what he is going to do; he even prepared the scene for it. He moves from the back of Allen to the front to distract him with the music he just putted in (Hip to be square by Huey Lewis and The News), as he is moving he is talking about the musical group with very wise words, then he keeps going and enters the bathroom and keeps speaking to Allen about the group and then about the song that is being played, he exists the bathroom and stands behind Allen with his raincoat approaches the stereo turns the volume up gets to Allen’s back once more and after his is done with his insightful comment about the song he calls for Allen and when he turns and looks at him, Bateman axes him of and while doing it he tells him the reason why he is killing him. Then he takes the raincoat off and seats on a sofa lights a tobacco crosses his leg and stares at the dead body, during the whole process the framing of the shots is very symmetric and the attitude of Patrick Bateman is obviously psychotic, but is cynical and in some way funny. The movements of the two characters on the scene are used basically to denote that Allen is a passive actor in the scene that has no clue and Patrick is the active actor which is taking into action his conception of justice to get where he wants.
Bateman gestures are mainly facial, he expresses his emotions on his face, and the same goes for Allen. Finally, the costumes are very important in this scene and obviously in the film, they are both wearing very expensive suits and ties (Windsor knots). Bateman is wearing an Italian suit and his appearance describes his personality, is a black suit with very thin vertical white lines. He is always looking very sharp from the hair to the shoes, and he wears a transparent raincoat for two things one is because he does not want to get his suit splashed with blood and the other is that we wants people to see his suit. Obviously the gestures and acting of the characters are for us to feel bad for Paul Allen, a happy drunk who is about to be killed and to commence to feel really scared or creped out by Patrick Bateman’s psychopathic behavior.
All these stylistic choices have been made because they reinforce the plot story and the character personality, they all come together to strengthen the mood of the film as a whole and of this scene in particular. They are used to convey that touch of perfect balance and symmetry, which frightens us with the brutality of the basic impulses of Patrick Bateman.
Cinematography:
The film stock used for this motion picture was a very sober range color one produced by DeLuxe, probably Technicolor, with an aspect ratio of 16:9. This scene has a total length of two minutes and twenty seven seconds, and twenty two shots. The duration of the shots is from one second or two second the shorter and forty three seconds the longer. The whole scene was shot with a variable focal length lens, probably 28mm to 80mm zoom lens, this is because this is the most practical lens to use for a scene in which the distance of the objects to the camera is no longer than six to eight meters and no shorter than 20 to 30 centimeters.
Shot # 1: Cut in from previous shot. Duration of 4 seconds. Deep focus with a high camera angle, no camera movement. Long shot of Paul Allen seated in a couch, framed in the center of the shot.
Shot # 2: Cut in. Duration of 2 seconds. Shallow focus in eye-line level angle, short panning from right to left to reframe. Extreme Close Up emphasizing Huey Lewis and The News CD on Patrick Bateman’s right hand. CD is framed in the center of the shot.
Shot # 3: Cut in. Duration of 2 seconds. Deep focus with a high angle, no camera movement. Medium Long Shot of Allen seated in the coach, Allen covers the lower half of the frame to the bottom right corner of the frame.
Shot # 4: Cut in. Duration of 13 seconds. Deep focus with a slight low camera angle. Medium Long Shot, following shot of Patrick Bateman from the stereo, across the living room and to the other side of the living room where he stops facing Allen. Bateman is always in center in the framing and when he stops after crossing the living room he is also in the center of the back door frame.
Shot # 5: Cut. Duration of 4 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the whole living room, Paul Allen is still seated on the couch he is in the center of the frame; Bateman is on right of the frame and walks to the right of Allen across the living room to the bathroom.
Shot # 6: Cut. Duration of 9 seconds. Shallow focus with eye-line level, a short tilt up to reframe on Bateman. Medium Long Shot of Bateman’s lower part of the body entering from the left of the frame and showing that he takes the raincoat and raveling that there is an ax under it, then a short tilt up to reframe on him as he is on the center of the frame looking at himself in the mirror while we is putting the raincoat on.
Shot # 7: Cut. Duration of 3 seconds. Very shallow focus with an eye-line level angle, rack focus from Bateman’s hand to glass of water and pills case. Extreme Close Up of Bateman’s hand taking a pill from a table, then slight rack focus to the glass of water behind the pill and the pills case, emphasizing Bateman’s sickness with the fact he takes pills. Then Bateman takes the glass of water. The pill is hard to see, but is in the center of the frame in the lower third of it, the glass is to the right and the pills case is to the left of the frame.
Shot # 8: Cut. Duration of 6 seconds. Shallow focus with an eye-line level angle, no camera movement. Medium Long Shot of Bateman staring at himself in the mirror and taking his pill, Bateman puts the glass down and stares at himself in the mirror a few seconds more with an estrange look that reveals his obvious intentions, then he walks out of the bathroom and he grabs the ax on his way out, and does a fancy turn on the door to enter the living room walking backwards.
Shot # 9: Cut. Duration of 5 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the living room in which Allen is still seating on the couch but this time leaning a little forward and he is in the center of the shot, Bateman enters the shot from the left and walking backwards crosses the whole room stopping at the left of the frame standing next to a wall and standing behind Allen’s right on the back of him.
Shot # 10: Cut. Duration of 2 seconds. Shallow focus with a high camera angle, no camera movements. Extreme Close Up of Bateman’s legs from below the knee down, his legs are to the left of the frame and the ax that he places on the floor and against the wall is on the right of the frame, the Bateman takes two really short steps forward, this shot is done with a canted framing.
Shot # 11: Cut. Duration of 3 seconds. Deep focus, with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the living room in which Allen is seated on the couch trying to see at Patrick that is behind him and Patrick starts to button up his raincoat. Allen is in the center of the frame and Bateman is to the left of the frame.
Shot # 12: Cut. Duration of 7 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Medium Long Shot of Allen seated in the couch the shot is taken from his back while he is with his head turned to try to see backwards while he is talking to Bateman. Allen is in the center of the frame, very slightly to the left.
Shot # 13: Cut. Duration of 1 second. Shallow focus with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Extreme Close Up of Bateman’s face with a gesture that denotes a funny sick cynicism.
Shot # 14: Cut. Duration of 5 seconds. Shallow focus with an eye-line level camera angle taking Allen as reference, no camera movements. Medium Long Shot of Allen seated on the couch and talking to Bateman which is on the back finishing buttoning up his raincoat and walks towards the camera passing trough Allen right. Allen is to the right of the frame and Bateman is to the left of the frame and exits the shots trough the left or the frame too.
Shot # 15: Cut. Duration of 4 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Medium Long Shot of Patrick coming into the shot from the right of the frame, then turning to face the camera after having putted the CD of Huey Lewis and The News, the one he is being talking about and keeps doing so. Bateman is slightly to the right of the center of the frame.
Shot # 16: Cut. Duration of 7 seconds. Soft shallow focus with an eye-line level camera angle, a very short and slow pan from right to left to reframe the shot after Bateman makes a very comical hip movement to the beat of the song and starts walking. Long Shot of the living room facing Allen’s back and Bateman’s front, in the shot Allen is still seating on the couch and to the left of the frame, Bateman is to the right of the frame, then he makes the fancy hip movement, passes across the frame and walks out of it, a short pan is done to reframe Allen in the center.
Shot # 17: Cut. Duration of 10 seconds. Deep focus with a low camera angle, a short tilt is done to reframe Bateman. Medium Close Up of Bateman grabbing the ax and standing totally straight, a short tilt is done to reframe him; he keeps in the center of the frame. After finishing his speech on the CD he calls Paul.
Shot # 18: Cut. Duration of 2 seconds. Shallow focus with a slight high camera angle, really, really small tilt and pan are done to keep the framing. Medium Close Up of Allen from the back, then he turns to Patrick and makes a face of terror when he sees that Patrick is swinging the first blow. Allen covers almost the whole frame.
Shot # 19: Cut. Duration of 2 seconds. Soft shallow depth of field with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Medium Close Up of Bateman’s face after striking the first blow, he lifts his face and we see the blood covering his face and the anger on his face, then he moves out from the shot trough the left of the frame where he mostly is in the shot.
Shot # 20: Cut. Duration of 3 seconds. Shallow focus with a high camera angle, no camera movements. Extreme Close Up on Allen’s body that falls on the floor and spills some blood on the floor, the shot is from below the shoulders up to the beginning of the belt, we see Allen’s body to the upper side of the frame and the blood coming out it, on the lower part of the frame.
Shot # 21: Cut. Duration of 43 seconds. Deep focus a eye-line level camera angle, there are some short and fast tilts to keep Bateman in frame while he is striking Allen’s body repeatedly, Bateman is in the center of the frame, then he stops the ax strikes and moves from side to side a little and he is kept in frame with short pans, after that he is standing to the left of the frame and takes the raincoat off and drops it, he crosses the frame from left to right but a following shot is done till he turns around this time facing the left side of the frame, he sits down and to keep with him in the frame a tilt is done. He fixes his hair and the focus is now shallow, while looking at the body he takes a tobacco out and puts it on his mouth and searches for his Zippo lighter.
Shot # 22: Cut. Duration of 9 seconds. Deep focal length with a low camera angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the living room where the body of Paul Allen is laying on the floor while Patrick Bateman is seated on a sofa looking at it, Bateman lights his tobacco and looks at the body, gets comfortable and crosses his right leg over the left and extends his left arm to smoke passively while he stares at the corpse. The body of Allen occupies the lower half of the frame and we can see from above his belt down to his shoes all across the frame, and Bateman occupies the upper half of the frame and he is in the center of the frame.
The stylistic choices made in this scene are in order to give an insight to the world and mind of both Paul Allen and Patrick Bateman, but especially to Bateman’s distort vision. When deep focus is used is in order to show the background or set which was already explained, this set with straight lines describes Bateman’s personality and also when the both of the characters of the scene are needed to be involved in the actual action, and when shallow focus is used is in order to show that Bateman and his mind are blurry and one doesn’t know what to expect to come out from that fog, one can see him sharply, but not his mind. The extreme close ups are used obviously to emphasize on specific details that the directors wants us to see like Bateman’s face and expressions opening a window to his mind or Allen’s body to shows that he is for sure dead, or the pills case shot to let the audience know that Patrick is under a pill treatment. The other shot are used depending on the importance of Allen to appear on the shot or not, because when Bateman is making the most insightful pint of his speech is not necessary to see Allen. An finally the angles used are very obvious, mostly high angles for Paul to make the audience feel that he is weak and fragile and low angles for Bateman to show his authority and power.
Editing:
The rhythm of the scene has a yuppie beat, reinforced by the lyrics of the song “Hip to be Square” by Huey Lewis and the News, the stress generates anxiety and inflicts agony to the audience, since they know what is going to happen to Paul Allen but they are unable to warn him, yet the audience is drawn to stupidly reaffirm in interrogation to themselves “is he really going to kill him?” there is no reason, then the audience waits in pain for the inevitable, and finally the pace of the scene goes along with the music is fast and jumpy, and the scene is over in a blink leaving the audience with a sour taste on their mouths. The editing style used in this scene is the Hollywood classical Continuity Editing, because the author doesn’t want to draw the attention to the editing, but instead make it invisible so that the audience connects in a deeper way with the event that is happening. There are some establishing and reestablishing shot done to show the spatial distance of the important characters and set in the scene. Because of the use of the Continuity Editing style, the duration of every shot is very short, even shorter, as a matter of fact the longer take lasts forty three seconds. We also see the use of shot-reverse shots in this scene because is the best way to portray a conversation situation like this in an invisible editing style; and because of the same reason in the whole scene when passing from a shot to another, a simple cut is used, but even more important is the fact that the 180° rules is not broken, and that there is a constant use of eyeline match and match on action in order to keep that sense of continuity. The thematic content of this editing in this scene resides on the duration of the shot, which underpin the characterization of Bateman and his world, a very fast one where time is the least people has, at least apparently.
Sound:
The sound in this scene is totally external diegetic, because everything that sounds within the scene makes part of the world they are in, from their voices and conversation to the song. And it is external because none of them happens inside the mind of a character in the scene. Even though the song that is being sounding in the CD player passes almost instantly to be an off-screen sound, it is always, as every other sound in the scene, simultaneous. The sound perspective is always kept in the scene. The dialogues of the scene are recorded from direct sound, yet, the author of this paper states, that the song we listen is synchronous sound. The only sound effects on this scene are synchronous too, and those are the sound of the ax blows cutting through the flesh of Paul Allen. The dialogue is the scene is practically a monologue sustained by Patrick Bateman in which he talks about the music that we will hear in the scene. What Bateman says and the lyrics of the song are very important, because they contextualize and are the clearest characterization of Bateman and the film as a whole.
Every single stylistic choice as well as narrative and/or plot and character development on this sequence is very important, because it is used to reinforce the thematic content of the film as a whole; each chosen style from the Mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound is used to strengthen the characterization of the psychology of Patrick Bateman, a psychopath that has a extremely fashionable killer looks.
Mise-en-scene:
This scene is set in Patrick Bateman’s apartment in two places, the living room mainly and the bathroom. In the living room we see that everything is most black and white, the walls and the pictures on it. And also everything in the apartment is in perfect alignment; every line in the apartment is either vertical or horizontal, very sharp lines. On the living room we see that all the furniture is covered with white blankets, and in the place where Allen is seated the floor is covered with newspapers, and the articles are all in line, we can notice because all the picture on them are positioned in the same way, and apparently, they are all articles of the style or fashion section of the newspaper, the audience is able to know this because Allen’s says it. Furthermore, in every joint of the news paper sheets we see grey duck tape in a shape of a cross; announcing from the very beginning of the scene that Patrick has decided that that will be Allen’s grave. This is used to characterize Bateman as a person that is anal and thinks things in advance; he prepares for action and is very fashion oriented.
Is very important to notice that we can not se the faces of the people on the pictures in the apartment, because this is a metaphor to what is just happening and what happens everyday in Bateman’s world, a world of pretensions and style were people don’t know each other’s faces even tough they work together. The composition and design of the scene are as his apartment lines, symmetric. As a brief note, and to reaffirm Patrick’s cruelty we notice that the ax he uses to kill Allen is not sharp (and a beautiful ax by the way), very shiny with an oak wood handle, making it more painful for the victim in every strike because, it not only cuts, but hammers in every blow.
In this scene there are two types of lighting, one used on the living room and another used on bathroom. On the living room a two-point lighting is used, that is a key light and a fill light, yet the lighting used is very soft and diffused, we see very light shadows if we see any, the area is very clear and lighted. In the same way, in the bathroom the lighting remains two-point, but is darker than in the living room, we also see that when he starts to put on his raincoat, we cannot see his eyes because there is a straight horizontal shadow that covers them, this is used to make the audience feel uncertain of his feelings. Then he takes a few steps closer to the mirror and we see his face with an incredible serenity and determination, finally as he is going out of the bathroom we slightly see that his shadow precedes him, we understand that his dark side has taken the command and is about to take action. This type of lighting is used because even though he is about to murder someone, the important thing is that we see that he doesn’t break a sweat, is very relaxed and sharp looking. And in the bathroom obviously is darker because here is where he prepares himself for a dark action. Another reason for this type of lighting is to create the effect that is the apartment lighting what we see because is at night, it is used to give the scene a realistic touch.
Allen during the whole scene doesn’t move really much, he is just so drunk that he is just seated there without a clear understanding of what is really happening he is just a very naive, happy and stupid good drunk guy. On the other hand, Bateman is in constant movement, with a lot of confidence, because he is in his domain and is obviously in full knowledge of what he is going to do; he even prepared the scene for it. He moves from the back of Allen to the front to distract him with the music he just putted in (Hip to be square by Huey Lewis and The News), as he is moving he is talking about the musical group with very wise words, then he keeps going and enters the bathroom and keeps speaking to Allen about the group and then about the song that is being played, he exists the bathroom and stands behind Allen with his raincoat approaches the stereo turns the volume up gets to Allen’s back once more and after his is done with his insightful comment about the song he calls for Allen and when he turns and looks at him, Bateman axes him of and while doing it he tells him the reason why he is killing him. Then he takes the raincoat off and seats on a sofa lights a tobacco crosses his leg and stares at the dead body, during the whole process the framing of the shots is very symmetric and the attitude of Patrick Bateman is obviously psychotic, but is cynical and in some way funny. The movements of the two characters on the scene are used basically to denote that Allen is a passive actor in the scene that has no clue and Patrick is the active actor which is taking into action his conception of justice to get where he wants.
Bateman gestures are mainly facial, he expresses his emotions on his face, and the same goes for Allen. Finally, the costumes are very important in this scene and obviously in the film, they are both wearing very expensive suits and ties (Windsor knots). Bateman is wearing an Italian suit and his appearance describes his personality, is a black suit with very thin vertical white lines. He is always looking very sharp from the hair to the shoes, and he wears a transparent raincoat for two things one is because he does not want to get his suit splashed with blood and the other is that we wants people to see his suit. Obviously the gestures and acting of the characters are for us to feel bad for Paul Allen, a happy drunk who is about to be killed and to commence to feel really scared or creped out by Patrick Bateman’s psychopathic behavior.
All these stylistic choices have been made because they reinforce the plot story and the character personality, they all come together to strengthen the mood of the film as a whole and of this scene in particular. They are used to convey that touch of perfect balance and symmetry, which frightens us with the brutality of the basic impulses of Patrick Bateman.
Cinematography:
The film stock used for this motion picture was a very sober range color one produced by DeLuxe, probably Technicolor, with an aspect ratio of 16:9. This scene has a total length of two minutes and twenty seven seconds, and twenty two shots. The duration of the shots is from one second or two second the shorter and forty three seconds the longer. The whole scene was shot with a variable focal length lens, probably 28mm to 80mm zoom lens, this is because this is the most practical lens to use for a scene in which the distance of the objects to the camera is no longer than six to eight meters and no shorter than 20 to 30 centimeters.
Shot # 1: Cut in from previous shot. Duration of 4 seconds. Deep focus with a high camera angle, no camera movement. Long shot of Paul Allen seated in a couch, framed in the center of the shot.
Shot # 2: Cut in. Duration of 2 seconds. Shallow focus in eye-line level angle, short panning from right to left to reframe. Extreme Close Up emphasizing Huey Lewis and The News CD on Patrick Bateman’s right hand. CD is framed in the center of the shot.
Shot # 3: Cut in. Duration of 2 seconds. Deep focus with a high angle, no camera movement. Medium Long Shot of Allen seated in the coach, Allen covers the lower half of the frame to the bottom right corner of the frame.
Shot # 4: Cut in. Duration of 13 seconds. Deep focus with a slight low camera angle. Medium Long Shot, following shot of Patrick Bateman from the stereo, across the living room and to the other side of the living room where he stops facing Allen. Bateman is always in center in the framing and when he stops after crossing the living room he is also in the center of the back door frame.
Shot # 5: Cut. Duration of 4 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the whole living room, Paul Allen is still seated on the couch he is in the center of the frame; Bateman is on right of the frame and walks to the right of Allen across the living room to the bathroom.
Shot # 6: Cut. Duration of 9 seconds. Shallow focus with eye-line level, a short tilt up to reframe on Bateman. Medium Long Shot of Bateman’s lower part of the body entering from the left of the frame and showing that he takes the raincoat and raveling that there is an ax under it, then a short tilt up to reframe on him as he is on the center of the frame looking at himself in the mirror while we is putting the raincoat on.
Shot # 7: Cut. Duration of 3 seconds. Very shallow focus with an eye-line level angle, rack focus from Bateman’s hand to glass of water and pills case. Extreme Close Up of Bateman’s hand taking a pill from a table, then slight rack focus to the glass of water behind the pill and the pills case, emphasizing Bateman’s sickness with the fact he takes pills. Then Bateman takes the glass of water. The pill is hard to see, but is in the center of the frame in the lower third of it, the glass is to the right and the pills case is to the left of the frame.
Shot # 8: Cut. Duration of 6 seconds. Shallow focus with an eye-line level angle, no camera movement. Medium Long Shot of Bateman staring at himself in the mirror and taking his pill, Bateman puts the glass down and stares at himself in the mirror a few seconds more with an estrange look that reveals his obvious intentions, then he walks out of the bathroom and he grabs the ax on his way out, and does a fancy turn on the door to enter the living room walking backwards.
Shot # 9: Cut. Duration of 5 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the living room in which Allen is still seating on the couch but this time leaning a little forward and he is in the center of the shot, Bateman enters the shot from the left and walking backwards crosses the whole room stopping at the left of the frame standing next to a wall and standing behind Allen’s right on the back of him.
Shot # 10: Cut. Duration of 2 seconds. Shallow focus with a high camera angle, no camera movements. Extreme Close Up of Bateman’s legs from below the knee down, his legs are to the left of the frame and the ax that he places on the floor and against the wall is on the right of the frame, the Bateman takes two really short steps forward, this shot is done with a canted framing.
Shot # 11: Cut. Duration of 3 seconds. Deep focus, with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the living room in which Allen is seated on the couch trying to see at Patrick that is behind him and Patrick starts to button up his raincoat. Allen is in the center of the frame and Bateman is to the left of the frame.
Shot # 12: Cut. Duration of 7 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Medium Long Shot of Allen seated in the couch the shot is taken from his back while he is with his head turned to try to see backwards while he is talking to Bateman. Allen is in the center of the frame, very slightly to the left.
Shot # 13: Cut. Duration of 1 second. Shallow focus with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Extreme Close Up of Bateman’s face with a gesture that denotes a funny sick cynicism.
Shot # 14: Cut. Duration of 5 seconds. Shallow focus with an eye-line level camera angle taking Allen as reference, no camera movements. Medium Long Shot of Allen seated on the couch and talking to Bateman which is on the back finishing buttoning up his raincoat and walks towards the camera passing trough Allen right. Allen is to the right of the frame and Bateman is to the left of the frame and exits the shots trough the left or the frame too.
Shot # 15: Cut. Duration of 4 seconds. Deep focus with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Medium Long Shot of Patrick coming into the shot from the right of the frame, then turning to face the camera after having putted the CD of Huey Lewis and The News, the one he is being talking about and keeps doing so. Bateman is slightly to the right of the center of the frame.
Shot # 16: Cut. Duration of 7 seconds. Soft shallow focus with an eye-line level camera angle, a very short and slow pan from right to left to reframe the shot after Bateman makes a very comical hip movement to the beat of the song and starts walking. Long Shot of the living room facing Allen’s back and Bateman’s front, in the shot Allen is still seating on the couch and to the left of the frame, Bateman is to the right of the frame, then he makes the fancy hip movement, passes across the frame and walks out of it, a short pan is done to reframe Allen in the center.
Shot # 17: Cut. Duration of 10 seconds. Deep focus with a low camera angle, a short tilt is done to reframe Bateman. Medium Close Up of Bateman grabbing the ax and standing totally straight, a short tilt is done to reframe him; he keeps in the center of the frame. After finishing his speech on the CD he calls Paul.
Shot # 18: Cut. Duration of 2 seconds. Shallow focus with a slight high camera angle, really, really small tilt and pan are done to keep the framing. Medium Close Up of Allen from the back, then he turns to Patrick and makes a face of terror when he sees that Patrick is swinging the first blow. Allen covers almost the whole frame.
Shot # 19: Cut. Duration of 2 seconds. Soft shallow depth of field with an eye-line level camera angle, no camera movements. Medium Close Up of Bateman’s face after striking the first blow, he lifts his face and we see the blood covering his face and the anger on his face, then he moves out from the shot trough the left of the frame where he mostly is in the shot.
Shot # 20: Cut. Duration of 3 seconds. Shallow focus with a high camera angle, no camera movements. Extreme Close Up on Allen’s body that falls on the floor and spills some blood on the floor, the shot is from below the shoulders up to the beginning of the belt, we see Allen’s body to the upper side of the frame and the blood coming out it, on the lower part of the frame.
Shot # 21: Cut. Duration of 43 seconds. Deep focus a eye-line level camera angle, there are some short and fast tilts to keep Bateman in frame while he is striking Allen’s body repeatedly, Bateman is in the center of the frame, then he stops the ax strikes and moves from side to side a little and he is kept in frame with short pans, after that he is standing to the left of the frame and takes the raincoat off and drops it, he crosses the frame from left to right but a following shot is done till he turns around this time facing the left side of the frame, he sits down and to keep with him in the frame a tilt is done. He fixes his hair and the focus is now shallow, while looking at the body he takes a tobacco out and puts it on his mouth and searches for his Zippo lighter.
Shot # 22: Cut. Duration of 9 seconds. Deep focal length with a low camera angle, no camera movements. Long Shot of the living room where the body of Paul Allen is laying on the floor while Patrick Bateman is seated on a sofa looking at it, Bateman lights his tobacco and looks at the body, gets comfortable and crosses his right leg over the left and extends his left arm to smoke passively while he stares at the corpse. The body of Allen occupies the lower half of the frame and we can see from above his belt down to his shoes all across the frame, and Bateman occupies the upper half of the frame and he is in the center of the frame.
The stylistic choices made in this scene are in order to give an insight to the world and mind of both Paul Allen and Patrick Bateman, but especially to Bateman’s distort vision. When deep focus is used is in order to show the background or set which was already explained, this set with straight lines describes Bateman’s personality and also when the both of the characters of the scene are needed to be involved in the actual action, and when shallow focus is used is in order to show that Bateman and his mind are blurry and one doesn’t know what to expect to come out from that fog, one can see him sharply, but not his mind. The extreme close ups are used obviously to emphasize on specific details that the directors wants us to see like Bateman’s face and expressions opening a window to his mind or Allen’s body to shows that he is for sure dead, or the pills case shot to let the audience know that Patrick is under a pill treatment. The other shot are used depending on the importance of Allen to appear on the shot or not, because when Bateman is making the most insightful pint of his speech is not necessary to see Allen. An finally the angles used are very obvious, mostly high angles for Paul to make the audience feel that he is weak and fragile and low angles for Bateman to show his authority and power.
Editing:
The rhythm of the scene has a yuppie beat, reinforced by the lyrics of the song “Hip to be Square” by Huey Lewis and the News, the stress generates anxiety and inflicts agony to the audience, since they know what is going to happen to Paul Allen but they are unable to warn him, yet the audience is drawn to stupidly reaffirm in interrogation to themselves “is he really going to kill him?” there is no reason, then the audience waits in pain for the inevitable, and finally the pace of the scene goes along with the music is fast and jumpy, and the scene is over in a blink leaving the audience with a sour taste on their mouths. The editing style used in this scene is the Hollywood classical Continuity Editing, because the author doesn’t want to draw the attention to the editing, but instead make it invisible so that the audience connects in a deeper way with the event that is happening. There are some establishing and reestablishing shot done to show the spatial distance of the important characters and set in the scene. Because of the use of the Continuity Editing style, the duration of every shot is very short, even shorter, as a matter of fact the longer take lasts forty three seconds. We also see the use of shot-reverse shots in this scene because is the best way to portray a conversation situation like this in an invisible editing style; and because of the same reason in the whole scene when passing from a shot to another, a simple cut is used, but even more important is the fact that the 180° rules is not broken, and that there is a constant use of eyeline match and match on action in order to keep that sense of continuity. The thematic content of this editing in this scene resides on the duration of the shot, which underpin the characterization of Bateman and his world, a very fast one where time is the least people has, at least apparently.
Sound:
The sound in this scene is totally external diegetic, because everything that sounds within the scene makes part of the world they are in, from their voices and conversation to the song. And it is external because none of them happens inside the mind of a character in the scene. Even though the song that is being sounding in the CD player passes almost instantly to be an off-screen sound, it is always, as every other sound in the scene, simultaneous. The sound perspective is always kept in the scene. The dialogues of the scene are recorded from direct sound, yet, the author of this paper states, that the song we listen is synchronous sound. The only sound effects on this scene are synchronous too, and those are the sound of the ax blows cutting through the flesh of Paul Allen. The dialogue is the scene is practically a monologue sustained by Patrick Bateman in which he talks about the music that we will hear in the scene. What Bateman says and the lyrics of the song are very important, because they contextualize and are the clearest characterization of Bateman and the film as a whole.
Every single stylistic choice as well as narrative and/or plot and character development on this sequence is very important, because it is used to reinforce the thematic content of the film as a whole; each chosen style from the Mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound is used to strengthen the characterization of the psychology of Patrick Bateman, a psychopath that has a extremely fashionable killer looks.
1 comment:
The viewer is NOT supposed to think that Bateman has "extreme good taste" - especially for music. His monologues drive home that the shallowness of his musical taste, eg that early Huey Lewis was too "difficult" for him. You can get some idea of the film's idea of what good music is from the fact that the musical director was John Cale - as in The Velvet Underground.
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