Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: David Fincher
Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter
Written by: Jim Uhls (novel by Chuck Pahlaniuk)
Produced by: Ross Bell, Cean Chaffin, Art Linson

The Nutshell

Two men start an underground fighting club that changes its members' perception of the world.

The Review

    Fight Club is one of the most daring, inventive films of the year. It combines non-traditional camera work, an amazing score by The Dust Brothers, and great acting to deliver what at first glance is an amazing film. Unfortunately, that pesky little thing called the plot ruins everything.

    Ed Norton has gone from being the teacher to the pupil. In American History X, he plays Derek, a skinhead who is both intellectual and eloquent. He convinces others, especially his younger brother, that his cause his just, and causes great damage to his friends and family. In Fight Club, Norton is now the student, under the thrall of teacher Tyler Durden (Pitt). Durden is no neo-Nazi, but rather an anti-consumer fanatic. Durden hates everything about Western society, from the way we care about money and possessions to the way we as a species have forgotten how to hunt and kill. He is as persuasive in his arguments as Derek, and he has the potential to cause much more damage. The difference between the two characters, and indeed between the two films, is plausibility. American History X scared us by using realistic events, news stories that talk of a hate crime somewhere else on the planet, etc. The film had immense power because we could easily see in our own children the potential to be such a monster, if given the right propaganda. Fight Club however, won't make anyone afraid for their children, or their consumeristic world. If anything, it will have people shaking their heads wondering how such a hip-looking film could be so empty.

    Tyler Durden and Jack (Norton) create the Fight Club by beating each other up one day, just for the hell of it. They enjoy it, and decide to make it a hobby. A subsequent fight in a bar's parking lot attracts a small group of burly men who see in the combatants something special; they see, for a brief moment, the true nature of Man, or rather Men; the hunter/fighter/killer that we once were. These fistfights bring men from all corners of society, and eventually the Club is formed. It has rules, "You do not talk about Fight Club" etc., and its leaders Tyler and Jack, though Tyler is truly in command. He is the one with the propaganda, the one able to remind the men why they are fighting each other. Eventually, Fight Clubs show up in every major city in America, and their membership skyrockets. Tyler takes his legion and ups the ante a bit. He gives them homework ("Your homework is to pick a fight with a total stranger...and lose."), and the group's motives become increasingly unclear, both to the viewer and to poor Jack, who feels a bit like a bystander after awhile. Where the Club's beginnings take us is unfortunately revealed in the first two minutes of film, in an incredibly bad choice of foreshadowing.

    The question here is, is this plausible? Not one bit. As the membership of the Club climbs, Tyler mentions that "since our numbers seem to be growing, I can tell that some of you aren't following the first rule of Fight Club." Here is the first bit of confusion. We are supposed to swallow the fact that this Club has caught on in every major city in America, that its members are blabbing about it to others, and yet not one single authority figure, like a cop or detective or somebody has got wind of it? Sure, later in the film we meet a couple of members who are in the public safety business, but the club goes from about 12 guys to what is apparently thousands, in one leap. And every single member, except for Tyler and Jack, is a brain-washed automaton. No one ever asks a question. All these muscular men simply accept things and do whatever their leaders say. Whatever.

    There are other major leaps of faith necessary for the viewer to enjoy this story, but I can't mention them. Suffice it to say that if you can swallow every twist and surprise the film throws at you, you might actually enjoy this movie. I simply couldn't, and from the mood of the crowd I was with, many others couldn't either. Now, I realize that this makes Fight Club sound like a truly bad film, but it isn't. It has many, many things going for it which help balance the package somewhat. David Fincher's directing style, for one thing, is a very nice surprise. The man behind Se7en and The Game, Fincher goes out on a stylish, original limb with Fight Club. The camera seldom stays in one place, various camera tricks abound (such as the awesome opening credit sequence involving the camera emerging from the inside of a human body) and the film occasionally takes a humourous step outside of itself (there is one scene where Jack talks to us face to face a la Ferris Bueller about the interesting things Tyler does while at work). These light moments help to keep the film from becoming bogged down in its violence, which gets pretty disgusting at times. The intelligent casting choices of Pitt, Norton and Helena Bonham Carter as Marla, the woman who enters both their lives, help the film as well. Norton seems able to portray any character with ease. His Jack defines the angst of office workers everywhere far more powerfully than Kevin Spacey does in American Beauty. As Tyler, Pitt gets the role he has probably been craving for years. After a couple of great parts earlier in his career, he hit a slump, with Seven Years In Tibet and Meet Joe Black getting critically savaged. Pitt recovers all ground his career may have lost with Tyler Durden, a character that captivates you and makes you laugh, even while committing horrible acts to his friends. Bonham Carter's Marla doesn't get much room to move between the two stars, but she does provide some laughs and a break from the violence. Even Meat Loaf makes an appearance as a testicular cancer victim Jack meets one night. While his character is probably a bit distasteful, he is one of the few characters in the film, other than Jack, who goes through any kind of change.

    Fight Club has a real problem with its violence. Despite what some critics are saying, the film truly does glorify its fights. The legions of willing fighters who arrive each night to beat the stuffing out of each other never once care about the fact that they are getting sometimes severely injured. Only one time during the Club's regular events, when a fighter's face is battered to a pink pulp, do the members get a bit uneasy. These men love fighting each other, they revel in it, all supposedly because they are getting back in touch with their innate nature. What a bunch of hooey. Fight Club is merely following a trend of filmmaking where it is okay to show violence as long as you put it in a certain light. When Natural Born Killers first arrived in theatres, critics jumped on Oliver Stone's back. Stone replied that his film was an attempt to show how the media glorified violence on television, yet no one really bought it, because that is like committing a murder to show how awful murder is. Another perhaps better example is this year's Summer of Sam. Director Spike Lee said that his film wasn't so much about the Son of Sam killer, but about the effects his killings had on a small neighbourhood in New York. That would have been an honourable statement had it been true, but in the end, there was Son of Sam brutally shooting victim after victim, with blood splattering all over windshields etc. Here again, a film that supposedly wasn't glorifying violence had violence all over it. Why did Lee have to show the actual killings if they weren't the emphasis of his film? And if Fight Club, an empty, implausible bloodfest, doesn't get off on its own deviancy, I don't know what does. While the film has moments of dark brilliance (you will never look at liposuction the same way again), it is really a violent blast of style with an awful story at its core.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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