Fight
Club (1999)
"Fight
Club" is the first film in a long time which seems to
have the possibility of being able to change the world.
It's dead set on a course for all out chaos and anarchy.
You can feel the excitement. You can experience the
adrenaline rush of testosterone straight to your heart.
You can see the coming of the savior of the millennium.
"Fight Club" is on a crash course with the 20th century
and seems dead set on exploding every myth, every ideal
and every moral of this almost dead, consumerism drenched,
century. And then, about 3/4th's of the way through,
it takes a S-curve through the plot that totally negates
this wonderful modern manifesto and makes the film the
mind-fuck of the decade. As a film, it's awe inspiring.
Edward Norton plays a defeated insomniac trying oh so
desperately to navigate through a world which borders
on the inane and the insipid. When he seems almost hopeless,
he meets up with a genuine powerhouse of a human being,
Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. The two undertake
a friendship based on male carnage and adrenaline rush.
They start "Fight Club," really nothing more than an
Ironman competition played out with bare fists in neighborhood
parking lots. As a male, even a gay one, I can tell
you that the film's brutality, never angry, always in
check, simply masculine, stirs a deep seated emotion
within me. This feeling is incomprehensible to females.
But males will feel it immediately. When Norton and
Pitt begin to beat each other senseless, it frees us
as men. It allows us to revel in our most basic personalities.
It returns us to the caveman days of being the hunter/gatherer.
We cannot help from becoming soaked in our own chemistry.
As a man, the feeling is overpowering. It makes us tingle.
The
friendship that evolves between Norton's protagonist
and Pitt's antagonist is seemingly opposite of brutality,
however. Their friendship takes on a air of subtle homoeroticism.
The film gets bare in it's physicality between males
and this heightened sense of masculinity cannot help
but seem more than just male bonding in a way. The film
hints subtly at this, but wisely does not delve into
it, keeping it subdued and just under the surface of
what is happening.
The acting in "Fight Club" is revolutionary as well.
Norton is forced to narrate much of the film, which
I hate, but at least what he is saying is interesting.
Still, it just makes you think you are listening to
a book on tape. But when we get into the meat of the
storyline, Norton takes incredible chances and allows
himself to be bloodied and uglied for his role. He also
handles the subtle sexuality of his character with ease.
Pitt, also willing to look real and bloodied and battered
in the film, is pure brilliance. His off-the-wall Tyler
never once makes us question the proceedings. Instead,
like Norton, we fall under his spell. We know he is
taking us to new places but they feel so damn familiar.
Helena Bonham Carter, as Marla, falls under Pitt's spell
as well. Previously being crouched into the finite world
of classic period dramas, Carter finds ample room to
breathe as a modern character here. Hell, she soars.
Her chemistry with Pitt and Norton set up all that is
to come in the climax of the film. She is the ignition
for the spark that explodes the world.
David Fincher does everything here. He makes the film
a instant classic. His fearless use of visuals to propel
the story again makes him a modern director of great
importance. Early scenes where Norton walks through
an apartment that looks like an Ikea catalogue come
to life make the later appearance of the squatter's
house he moves into all the more poignant. Fincher uses
every tool at his disposal to make the film work. Computer
graphics, awesome sets, the physicality of the actors,
narration, explosions, whatever it takes. Here, as in
"se7en," he creates another world, a separate vision.
But unlike his earlier works, this film, like "The Game,"
fits weary characters into the modern realism of our
times and shows them as unable to cope with the
unexpected. Until, of course, at last, they must. Fincher
continues on his rise to superstardom. If his film doesn't
bring about the complete annihilation of modern society,
he just might be the most important director of the
early 21st century.
And that century is just around the corner. I predict
there will be a lot of civil unrest and modern chaos
in the year 2000. 20% of it will be directly linked
to this film. It's a revolutionary manifesto splayed
out on the screen for every impressionable male teenager
and college frat boy to revel in. Drenched in the testosterone
endlessly produced by their masculine bodies and frightened
and confused by a modern world they do not even begin
to understand, they will lash out in carefree abandon
at civilization. And we will be all the better for it.
Notes:
Also with Meat Loaf and Jared Leto. Music by The Chemical
Brothers. Screenplay by Jim Uhls. Based on a novel by
Chuck Palahniuk.
In one scene, a movie theater can be seen in the background
with the title, "Seven Years in Tibet" on the marquee.
This was a Pitt movie that is the seeming opposite of
what we get here. Also, a resounding box office flop.
Pitt does not appear in the scene.
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