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| Movies,
Justin Harries,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F5
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"First rule of Fight Club, do not talk about Fight Club. Second rule of Fight Club, do NOT talk about Fight Club."
Well, those crazy kids have not been heeding orders ‘cos everyone’s talking about Fight Club. If ever a movie was made to court controversy this is it. Taken in the wake of Columine et al, a movie that appears to advocate violence as a wake up call for the modern emasculated man would seem like critical and financial suicide. However, with the names Brad Pitt and David Fincher attached, we’re talking a whole new ball game.
Their last teaming, the laugh riot Se7en, pretty much redefined urban squalor on screen, with Pitt daring to take a role other than set dressing. Fight Club continues this determinedly degenerate streak, pushing the envelope (and Pitts ace wardrobe) further by being an actual comedy. This is what surprised me most about Fight Club; it’s sickly, almost shockingly, very funny.
Modern man, as Fight Club tells it, is a mere shell, bereft of passion and self-expression. Cloistered by the protecting veil of good taste and decency, he has been reduced to a materialistic drone. Modern man is presented to us in the film in the form of Edward Norton (excellent in his WASPish servility), so deadened by his existence that he crashes terminal patients therapy groups in an attempt to feel some emotional catharsis. It takes the destruction of his apartment (a joy to see so many Ikea products go up in flames) and a revelationary act of violence (a smack in the kisser) by Pitts obstreperous soap salesman to garner some self-awareness. From here on in we’re in culture terrorism territory, as the film flings ideas around with gleeful abandon, leading to a ‘twist’ that regular viewers of the Twilight zone will have fathomed early on in the proceedings.
Most of the really interesting stuff happens in the first half of the movie. Its here that the film addresses quite accurately and not without humour the existential uncertainty felt by many of our generation, Norton’s cathartic fantasies of castrasprophy that pierce this mundane reality are a joy to behold, but by the time we reach his psychotic fugue we’re treading water. Finchers direction is schizodelicaly fantastic, never falling into the trap of annoying, finger wagging morality that Stone fell into in the similar Natural Born Killers, and fills his movie with so much throwaway fun I can’t begin to describe.
Ultimately Fight Club does not take itself or the culture around itself very seriously – it has to be wilfully irresponsible to be at all convincing – and many people have confused this attitude as pure violent provocation. Yes it bites the hand that feeds. No it doesn’t offer a viable alternative to the ills it presents. But at least Fight Club has an idea in its head. And that in itself makes it a refreshing alternative to the junk Hollywood routinely spews out.
UK rating:
18
US rating:
R
David Fincher1999, US
Brad Pitt , Edward Norton , Helena Bonham Carter , Meat Loaf and Jared Leto
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