FIGHT CLUB - ANOTHER GREAT FILM
We're not even in the Oscar race, and i've gone through all the adjectival vocabulary in praise of films. The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, The Sixth Sense and now Fight Club. I think Eyes Wide Shut can be taken out of the equation - it has well and truly been out-classed by the others (though not in control over mise en scene). But Fight Club is an amazing film - it really does push boundaries and cements the discourse of reality and disenchantment in modern society. It is marred only by its depictions of the chief anarchist with fascist colours. I suppose you can't be an anarchist if you follow rules, but it seems as though the film-maker did this to make his film and the violence that takes place in the film, more morally acceptable if it took place with the under-current of fascism. I think we can well and truly say that "anarchy" in itself isn't an evil - well not as evil as capitalism (in this film anyway). And as we sit in the cinema, sipping on coke, admiring the latest developments in cinema comfort and sound, we are parodied - our lifestyle choices are attacked, and the very essence of how we define ourselves is attacked. What's more is that it's extremely funny - we recognise it ourselves. Almost every line of dialogue is filled with humour, perverse and pervasive humour. THen there's fantasy - the whole film could be a fantasy if you want to look at it that way - but even within it we can see that tthis movie wants to tear at things, it wants to rip them apart - The fighting is a metaphor of that... The film process itself is torn apart in the movie, a fantasy about a plane being torn apart is engaged in, and then there are the various explosions. This movie is a deconstruction and a deconstructive movie. People of course will get all moral about it - and say how irresponsible it is. I wish they'd shut up - perhaps what is more irresponsible aare movies that make us slaves to the IKEA catalogue - movies that cement the feeling that we can be a movie star, we can be anyone we want to be (other than ourselves - because if we are ourselves, we don't need to buy the latest self improvement products). Fight Club gives credence to who we elites call "loonies" - it articulates their fears and their disenchantment with society - it articulates a class of people who have been left out of society. It even reminds me of all the country people who voted down the republic. These people know they'll never be movie stars, and will never be what advertisers tell them to be - perhaps they are the more enlightened ones by realising their fate and fighting down the institutions. Fight Club is also not detached from Hollywood narrative - it is WARPED hollywood narrative. Traditional Hollywood narrative will accept that politicians are corrupt, that institutions are bankrupt, that capitalism is bad, but there'll always be a Regan like figure who will rise above it and be an excellent father figure. Some people call this narrative fascist. Well, The Fight Club is the anti-E.T. film in a way, because the hero is definitely warped, mentally unstable and fascist in intention (as opposed to Spielberg and Lucas heroes who are not fascist in intention) - he goes that extra step by BREAKING the system, not helping its members cope with the system in the hope that one day, they will make it. Fight Club is the logical conclusion of the years of male disenchantment as expressed by classical cinema over the last two decades. Male disenchantment has been a growing theme in the cinema for a while and it stems from the void left in families due to the absent father. There are countless of these narratives (E.T. being just one). The Fight Club directly makes this obvious in dialogue ('we are brought up by women') and it occurs in the visual sphere as well through an almost parodic use of Freudian Theory. In Freudian Theory (or what i know of it), castration complex denies males of their power and it is the female that castrates. In this film, it is more like society is castrating the male and castration metaphors/jokes play big in this movie - the most obvious being the running testicular cancer theme (and perhaps when they destroy the corporate art - which is a big ball).
The ending image of Fight Club is at once a parody of hollywood sunset/reconciliation image AND a fantasy about the beauty in destruction. There's of course much more to this film, including other sexual connotations which in a way relate again to power and control, but the film's strength is in its mixed message and its excellent performances, style and originality. Movies are becoming almost too clever!
90/100