Fight Club Review
by Akiva Gottlieb (akiva AT excite DOT com)November 17th, 1999
Fight Club ****
rated R
20th Century Fox
139 minutes
starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto
based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
written by Jim Uhls
directed by David Fincher
“The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”
The preceeding line is the basis for David Fincher’s raised middle finger to the materialistic society we call life. It is called “Fight Club”.
It is one of the more controversial films of the year, for many varied reasons. “Fight Club” features graphic violence, a cynical view of the world, and all-out anarchy against the corporations that run America. But one of the reasons for all this controversy also makes “Fight Club” a very provocative, convincing motion picture. To the untrained eye, the film seems to promote nihilism, and make it seem like a bunch of guys could indeed rule the world through their very fists. Whether people will follow this notion is unknown, but “Fight Club” is a ticking time bomb; an unleashed threat to
conformity.
The last film I can remember which “promoted” anarchy was Stanley Kubrick’s classic, “A Clockwork Orange”. The response to that film was so strong that it was banned in England, its native country, for quite a while. Like “Clockwork”, “Fight Club”
will challenge the viewer; not only in its storyline, but in the message itself.
“Fight Club” was directed by David Fincher, the postmodern neorealist responsible for the dark creations of “Alien3”, “Seven”, and “The Game”. As he proved in the brilliant
“Seven”, he knows how to take an ordinary story, add some style and substance, and twist the result around so that no two people have the same reaction.
In “Fight Club”, he gives us a narrator/protagonist who refers to himself as Jack (Edward Norton). Jack has a bad case of insomnia. His apartment is filled with everything you could possibly imagine from an Ikea catalog. He spends his days selling out as a corporate executive for a major car company, and his nights at meetings for people with tuberculosis, testicular and colon cancer. Jack says it’s amazing how people listen to you when they think you’re dying. Magically, Jack is able to sleep again.
That is, until Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up to spoil his fun. You see, Marla also attends the meetings for people with tuberculosis, colon cancer and yes...even testicular cancer. Jack has insomnia once again, and he’s not happy about it.
When Jack reaches his low point in lack of self esteem, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on an airplane. Tyler manufactures and sells soap. In other words, he takes the fat off rich women’s asses and sells it back to them at a costly sum.
When the plane lands, Jack’s apartment mysteriously falls victim to a gas fire, and he ends up moving into Tyler’s abandoned
shack. That first night, Tyler asks Jack to hit him as hard as he can. Reluctantly, he does so, and lets go of all the materialistic desires that were plaguing him.
”The things you own end up owning you. It’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”
Gentlemen, welcome to Fight Club, an underground pit where men can feel better about themselves by beating the crap out of their peers. Before long, Tyler and Jack have started an underground militia, where they hand out “homework assignments” which are really random nihilistic acts of indifference and apathy.
While this may seem like Nazi propaganda for justified violence, but the film’s final third features a mind-blowing 360 degree twist that will leave you in a stupor. Admittedly, the twist isn’t as clever as the one in the overrated “Sixth Sense”, and it is the film’s only flaw, but it's undeniably thought provoking.
From the critical response so far, “Fight Club” is either loved or loathed. Some think that it is an immoral, overly violent piece of trash, while others find it a brilliant, scathing social commentary with the guts to tell it like it is. I opt for the latter.
It may take a second viewing to see if “Fight Club” makes any sense at all, but first-time writer Jim Uhls (adapting Chuck Palahniuk’s novel) has fashioned a sardonic, darkly funny script, and David Fincher keeps the film involving at every turn.
Another reason why “Fight Club” works so well is the forceful performance of Edward Norton. He first caught the public’s eye as a schizophrenic choirboy in “Primal Fear”, and garnered his second Oscar nomination last year for the powerful “American History X”. Norton can carry a film with the best of them, and “Fight Club” might just make him a star.
Brad Pitt is charismatic in as Tyler, showing that he belongs in Fincher’s films (he starred in “Seven”) rather than in melodramatic trash like “Seven Years In Tibet” and “Meet Joe Black”. Helena (“Wings Of The Dove”) Bonham Carter’s faux-American accent wasn’t believable, but the choice to cast her was an interesting one.
The opinions on “Fight Club” will differ from person to person, but my conclusion is that the film is an unsettling, freakish experience, but it will reward those who choose to accept it. It’ll be interesting to watch “Fight Club” in 30 years and see how it stands the test of time, because it brings up issues that may be important sooner than we think. To quote the tagline for this year’s “Minus Man”, “conversation usually follows.”
a review by Akiva Gottlieb
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