Fight Club

Directed by David Fincher
R	for extreme violence, language and sex
Starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham-Carter, Meat Loaf, and Jared Leto

Reviewer: Pete Luisi-Mills

"Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above." - Katharine Hepburn to Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen".

If I were to compile a list of things I never expect to willingly do, near the top you would read: "Rent and watch 'The Sound of Music.'" After viewing Fight Club, however, I am thinking of amending my long-standing view that no experience, no matter how unpleasant, could make me desire the company of the saccharine Von Trapp family. Fight Club is a very well-made movie. The performances are passionate and nuanced, by some of the best young actors around. The dialogue is clever and well-written. The cinematography is atmospheric and stylish. And the movie is devoid of any redeeming content whatsoever.

Watching this film is the cinematic equivalent of sucking on a bile duct. Do you find that comparison needlessly disgusting? I just saved you $7.50. Although it pretends to be about much more, I would contend that Fight Club is a cynical marketing scheme -- in the words of critic Roger Ebert a "macho porn" film, designed to get men off on images of testosterone-fueled violence and coated with a thin patina of cleverness and Social Commentary to alleviate their guilt.

Because of course Fight Club pretends to be a Cautionary Tale. It is Horrified by the actions of its characters. It wants to Warn us about the Dangers inherent in a Society where the men have been Emasculated, turned from Hunters into Consumers ("we have succumbed to the Ikea nesting instinct," says the Narrator at one point). The chief danger, apparently, is that society will produce a man like Tyler Durden, a charismatic pied piper with a mad gleam in his eye who will bewitch all the dissatisfied men of America and lead them to some sort of patriarchal paradise.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Fight Club starts out, interestingly enough, about a nameless man (the Narrator, played by Edward Norton) who is a relatively successful employee of "a major automobile manufacturer." He's unhappy, despite his accumulated creature comforts, and this unhappiness has made him an insomniac. He begins attending a variety of support groups (I'm not sure why he does this initially) and he soon discovers that nothing cleanses his mind and spirit like being in the presence of others who are suffering; there's nothing like a good cry to help him sleep, and he begins crashing every support group he can find to get his cathartic fix.

This segment of the film could have been a biting satire on self-help groups, but the film undermines these scenes with its persistent mocking cruelty. Self-help groups are a worthy target of satire -- the real human pain that drives people to them is not. What are we to make of a scene where a desperate cancer-stricken woman, wasted to a skeleton, informs her group that she dearly wants to have sex one last time, and with a pleading look in her eye adds that she has a variety of aids and devices at her disposal? Or the scene where a heartbroken survivor of testicular cancer shares with his group the shame he feels over the breasts he has developed due to the estrogen his body has begun to produce? There's no question that the audience is meant to laugh at these people; they are presented as pathetic whiners who ought to be metastasizing with some dignity instead of burdening others with their sob stories.

One day our nameless Narrator meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). He's the opposite of the Narrator in every way: charismatic, slovenly, self-assured, attractive and, well, free. They hit it off immediately (no pun intended), and soon the Narrator has shacked up with Tyler in his run-down house. They have taken up smacking each other around as recreation, and it's not long before they have attracted others who are interested in getting in on the fun. In only a matter of weeks they have started the first Fight Club, where frustrated, repressed men give free reign to their basic nature (violent and bloodthirsty). Tyler, who has by this time become a steely-eyed guru, encourages the men to turn their backs on modern society and embrace what, exactly? Certainly not anything spiritual. For all its quasi-religious posturing, the Fight Club has clearly replaced materialism with Materialism. The club's philosophy is exquisitely post-modern -- they don't know if there's a God, and they don't care. All that matters is that they feel something on a primal level, something powerful enough to smash through the numbing narcotic of the modern world. And what better dose of reality than a belt to the chin? It's not long before the Fight Club (or Clubs -- they've been springing up all over the country) turns its attention to darker enterprises, culminating in terrorist actions aimed at corporate giants.

Now, as I've said before, the movie doesn't support Tyler's philosophies. But it uses his beliefs as a cynical excuse to show the audience absolute gobs of violence and gore. This is certainly one of the nastiest movies ever made, and the fact that it didn't get an NC-17 boggles the mind. I'm not sure what more they could have done -- perhaps Brad Pitt could have torn out someone's throat with his teeth. I haven't been in a fight since eighth grade, but I'm pretty sure real fights are over fairly quickly. These are movie fights, however, and consequently they go on forever; the men involved are made of some kind of resilient spongy teflon, and they are still sparring and plucky when they obviously have more blood on their shirts than in their veins.

*NOTE: AT THIS POINT I AM GOING TO GIVE AWAY SECRET PLOT POINTS-STOP READING IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE FILM*

The most unbelievable thing about Fight Club is the surprise twist about four fifths of the way through. You know the sort of thing -- you think you understand the plot, and the director pulls out the rug from under the film, redefining everything that has come before. Ever since The Usual Suspects, this sort of thing has become obligatory, and it's frankly getting tiresome. You discover that the Narrator is Tyler Durden -- Tyler is a projection of the Narrator's frustration and guilt and helplessness. How do we discover this? Why, because the Narrator figures it out himself, of course. That's right! This man, who is obviously mad as a hatter, so deeply psychotic that he is unconsciously leading an elaborate double life (with the dark half of his split personality taking his own business trips, if you please), manages to figure out, a la Sherlock Holmes, that he is indeed insane and two people. Insanity is by definition an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. One doesn't just sort of "wake up" from psychosis -- certainly not when the psychotic in question has degenerated to the point of beating himself up in empty parking lots. This unbelievable surprise twist leads to a laughable love-conquers-all ending -- whether it is a lame cop-out or grotesque parody (or both) I don't know. Either way, it doesn't work.

So, we have a movie that is pretentious, cruel, disgusting and immoral (not because it's violent, but because it's dishonest in its intentions for showing that violence). Director David Fincher has never sunk quite this low before, although his other films (with the exception of the oddly positive The Game) have shown similar tendencies -- Alien 3 was a grim Gen-X shattering of the traditional action film, and Seven was an intelligent but repulsive exercise in malevolent filmmaking. What is Fincher's problem? He's the most antisocial filmmaker I've ever seen, worse than David Lynch or Gregg Araki. Films like Seven and Fight Club display a disturbing contempt for the audience and humanity in general. I don't know if Fincher is a ghoulish director who revels in this sort of thing, a hateful misanthrope determined to hold an unloving mirror up to our messed-up world, or simply a talented, jaded Hollywood whore who just doesn't care.

Whatever Fincher is, it's obvious that the studio executives intended this movie to make a lot of money (which it hasn't, incidentally). Apparently they believe there is no limit to the number of young male viewers ready to slake their thirst for cinematic violence. At one point in the film, Tyler observes sardonically that "self-improvement is masturbation." Wow. Just like this movie.

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