I wasted 110 minutes of my life on this?

I'm not gonna say I wasn't bored at some points, but then I feel that way about almost all films, but that doesn't mean I dislike. Sometimes I end up loving them. Maybe I can't go quite that far with this film, but I think it's a really ingenious way of presenting the life of a murderer. None of the cliches can apply to this film, and while that's not necessarily the basis for a great film, I think something really interesting comes out of it. No scene is wasted. I don't think the writer sat down and thought 'what are the most boring, mundane things I can put in this movie,' since every scene is geared towards developing the protagonists character a little further, and at the same time continuously underminging what we may or may not think about him. Some of his conversations, with his girlfriend, with Maria, with his mother, seem like that might be slowly dragging him out into the open, maybe to reveal a little about what he wants out of life, but their consistently undermined, and we realise by the end that actually we've gotten nowhere, his issues with his girlfriend, his loss of a best friend, even the brutal acts of violence, have gotten him nowhere beyond what he was considering in the first scene of the film - his facial hair.

I think that first scene was brilliant. Most people who see this film proabably know what it's about, and this first scene, the serial killer considering himself in the mirror might indicate to us some moral struggle, or some malicious glee, but actually we find out it doesn't. He doesn't really consider anything, but at the same time we realise he's not a psychopath. For the most part he's as normal as every other man around him. His girlfriend doesn't break up with him because he's crazy, because she's scared, he doesn't brutally murder her out of spite, in fact he's pretty indifferent. The murders he actually commits, the numbers of which only just satisfy the name serial killer, are not acts of passion or anger, but are as premeditated as his selling of the shop, or washing the dishes.

One film which I found myself consistently referring to was American Psycho, maybe becuase I haven't seen enough serial killer movies, but it felt very similar in some ways, but at a completely opposite end of the spectrum. Both men are socially functional males with a life that just happens to involve the odd murder. The real difference is in the way the murders are committed. Patrick Bateman is as competent at killing as he is at business, while Abel's murders are much more like his own drawn out, half-hearted attempt to work and live. He doesn't relish them, but just does it, gets on with it, which makes us ask why bother? Why kill if you don't enjoy it? But the answer is that nothing else in his life means much, so he might as well, just the same as he might as well have a girlfriend and might as well shave every morning. The fact that the deaths bring nothing to the plot kind of leaves one asking why they're there, but I think maybe it's interesting to see them both as metaphor as well as release. In the end I suppose Abel does reveal himself, but only in the way everything he does represents his attitude in its entirity.

In the end, I'm glad I went to see this film, and I'll probably rent or even buy it, just to look a little closer at this guy who doesn't really care, whose tragic flaw is his lack of flaws, and who'll never be caught because being caught wouldn't really bother him. That's what elevates it above American Psycho in many ways for me, it doesn't attempt to say everything, beleieving that maybe saying nothing will make us more inclined to engage in the world of Abel.

So, yeah, I was kinda bored, but I don't think that particular 110 minutes was wasted.

'Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes, and I'm as lucid as ever'