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Director David Fincher (Seven) punches a hole in our safe little worlds in the entirely disgusting but thoroughly riveting Fight Club. Go figure.
By STEVE PERSALL Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 15, 1999
Fight Club is a great movie. Just don't ask me why.
I've seen David Fincher's macho movie manifesto. But whatever it was that roared across the screen was so hyperkinetic, so relentless in its agenda to offend and enlighten. If you've ever been sucker-punched, felt that dazed pain dissolve into tenuous grasp of the situation, you know what I mean.
Fight Club is going to make a lot of people angry, especially knee-jerk protectors of anything so-called normal people cherish. Fincher's movie is anti-everything, from commercialism dictating our lifestyles to religions and cults offering escape from an apocalypse peeking around the corner.
Watching the film is something like cinematic masochism; we're certain that Fincher's politics aren't healthy, yet his brilliantly confused attacks on convention are exhilarating. Violence doesn't kill in Fight Club; it makes people feel more alive than before, even as a martyr. Fincher constantly rubs our noses in the cultural mess we've made.
Is the filmmaker irresponsible in creating such a violent dogma of individualism while the gunshots of Columbine still ring in our ears? Perhaps. Fight Club isn't a film to be viewed by impressionable minds. Fincher wants to incite something beyond the ease of imitation, although we should be concerned about viewers who will only glean the surface violence and consider it cool. The possibilities stretch far beyond bare-knuckle brawls.
Fight Club is precisely the sort of movie that cultural watchdogs blame for the downfall of civilization. In his peculiar, perverse way, it is civilization that Fincher is trying to save.
Why, he asks, would anyone want to live like Jack, the film's narrator, played to the abrasive hilt by Edward Norton? Jack has one of those occupations created solely to open loopholes in the system for capitalists to fatten themselves upon. He surrounds himself with mass-produced IKEA comfort. Jack is anonymous except for his resemblance to everyone else in the office cubicles of corporate imprisonment. Kafka would love this guy, and the maelstrom of uncontrollable forces surrounding him.
Jack is an insomniac in desperate need of a wake-up call. In the beginning, he is soothed by the tragedies of others, becoming addicted to self-help groups that shouldn't involve him. There is something rejuvenating about sobbing with cancer survivors and AIDS patients: "When people think you're dying," he muses, "they really listen to you." Jim Uhls' screenplay is loaded with such undeniably coarse and cogent one-liners.
Things are looking up until another "tourist" in these morbid therapy sessions appears. Helena Bonham Carter evaporates her prissy-Brit image as Marla Singer, a spiky, streetwise punk whose presence ruins Jack's healing process. He reverts to his button-down shell, simmering more than ever. Along comes a revelation in the form of Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman with smirking animosity toward the same things troubling Jack.
Tyler seems more dangerous, though. He chats about recipes for incendiary devices the way others discuss lunch. It's a brief meeting on a plane trip, yet Tyler is the person Jack calls for help when his condominium mysteriously explodes. They share drinks and pet peeves before Tyler poses an odd request outside the bar: Hit me as hard as you can. A drunken lark becomes an epiphany for Jack. Each punch produces the same pain he listens to in support groups, and it's all his to enjoy.
Bruises become badges of honor. Blood on his shirt collar at work sets him apart from the drones. He and Tyler regularly brawl, and they start drawing spectators who realize the same awakening. Before long, a mob gathers in private to indulge in these brutal sessions. Tyler organizes them under the banner of Fight Club, and there are rumors that the phenomenon is spreading to other cities across America.
The first rule Tyler dictates about this cult: Don't talk about Fight Club. Rule number two: Don't talk about Fight Club. The same gag order should apply to reviewers of Fincher's film, so many surprises await.
Suffice to say that Fight Club isn't merely a bloody buddy movie. Uhls' script, based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, delves into avenues of Marxist ideology, Fascist motivations, psychological dilemmas and Unabomber answers. If that doesn't make potential viewers squirm, the genially dark humor Fincher injects into the issues may do the trick.
Norton confirms his place among great modern actors with another chameleon turn. Pitt can't avoid how handsome he is, but Tyler's grunge hedonism and the escalating menace of his character brings out the baddest boy in the actor. There isn't a false note in the cast, not even the most exaggerated supporting roles, including rock singer Meat Loaf as a plump lamb led to Tyler's slaughter.
Fight Club is a movie of gloriously nihilistic tangents. Even anarchy becomes a franchise business in Fincher's haywired vision. Jim Haygood's whipsaw editing closely tracks the free-association mischief, and Jeff Cronenweth's camera staggers through the decadent mayhem like a punch-drunk brawler. Fight Club is one trippy movie, cramming twisted didactic and visceral thrills into a film experience to be favorably compared with A Clockwork Orange.
Like Stanley Kubrick's film, Fight Club pushes the envelope so far that outrage is sure to occur. One critic has already referred to it as "anti-God." A scene about liposuction fat stolen from ritzy clinics, turned into soap and sold back to the rich will disgust anyone, either for its goo or its similarity to Nazi atrocities.
Fight Club is not for the squeamish, nor the politically correct. Fincher made skin crawl with the serial-killer thriller Seven. This time he scrapes it down to the bone, but playfully and, despite the violence, in an oddly humane way. The apocalypse becomes just another excuse for true love to bloom. I'm not sure how it happens, but finally there is a movie compelling me to figure it out.
Grade: A
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto
Screenplay: Jim Uhls, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
Rating: R; violence, profanity, sexual situations, nudity
Running time: 139 min.