Fight Club

FIGHT CLUB                  C+              

USA  (139 mi)  1999  ‘Scope  d:  David Fincher

I flip through catalogues and wonder:  what kind of dining set defines me as a person?

And then, something happened. I let go. Lost in oblivion, dark and silent and complete, I found freedom. Losing all hope was freedom.

—Edward Norton (Narrator)

Things you own end up owning you. 

We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.

—Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt)      

As divisive a film as you’re going to find, one that certainly establishes its own particular view of existence, starting with the presumption heard through the narrator Edward Norton that following the rules of society has led one to a meaningless existence, a mind numbing void of emptiness from which there is no return.  Fincher paints another bleak picture of the world outside, a moral vacuum of rampant consumerism and blind obedience, where citizens have all but given up control of their lives to corporate mega-giants that all have their own secret agendas, which is mostly an uncontrollable lust for more power.  The darkly satiric tone of the film couldn’t be more unnatural and mockingly derisive, clearly preaching endlessly about what a sick society we’ve become, where the entire film is a cocky artificial substitute for the supposed impotency of mankind, yet will appeal to many for the snarky, wise-cracking attitude that prevails throughout.  The dialogue is endlessly monotonous and grates on one’s nerves, filled with such a contemptuous view of the meaninglessness of the world, which is first and foremost fed by an overriding feeling of a limitless amount of  self-loathing.  This is not the sort of thing that will appeal to everybody, but is all attitude, using an in-your-face style told with the reckless ambition of a runaway train, of an accident waiting to happen, where the mind-numbing monotony of your existence has grown so wretchedly offensive that you’d make a desperate deal with the devil to try anything to change the road you're on.  This film is for the most part a visualized, nightmarish hallucination of that deal.     

Part of the attractiveness of the movie is the offensive public reaction to Brad Pitt (never better than in this film), as overexposed a figure as exists in American consumerist society, painted endlessly on the cover of tabloid magazines, seen as a vile human being for leaving the lovable and supposedly adorable American sweetheart Jennifer Aniston from the popular TV show Friends (1994 – 2004) for the trailer trash aberration that is Angelina Jolie, he’s as detestable a public figure as anyone other than perhaps Scientologist zealot Tom Cruise.  With this view in mind, Pitt is given the role of his lifetime in Tyler Durden, a guy Norton meets on a plane (with the same briefcase) who is everything he is not, aggressive, good looking, brazenly confident, a guy who speaks his mind seemingly without a care in the world, literally the alter-ego of Edward Norton’s pathetic complacency.  When Norton returns home and the floor of his apartment his been obliterated by a massive explosion, destroying every Ikea possession he’d spent his lifetime collecting, he had nowhere else to turn, and using one of the last public pay phones seen anywhere in American movies (having converted to cellphones), Norton turns to Tyler for help.  After guzzling a few pitchers of beer, Tyler challenges him to relieve his pent-up aggressions with a punch, which leads to an exasperatingly thrilling (for them) fight in the parking lot, where they eventually end up at Tyler’s dilapidated home, which may be a building scheduled for demolition that was still standing, but in truly terrible shape.  The two of them start up a friendship that only accelerates throughout the picture, where at first they feel like best buddies, both on the same page, but by the end, it’s like they are two complete strangers.  The gist of the picture is revealing all the weird things that happen in between.

Perhaps most revolting is the continued theme of guys pulverizing other guys as a means to shock their overly compliant systems into feeling something different and new, a form of male therapy where pain means gain.  Despite the black eyes and bloody cuts on their faces, these guys live to fight again, as if this adrenaline is all they live for.  A strange human connection develops between the guys that fight in these fight clubs, as it’s all part of an underground movement that’s kept secret, separate and apart from women, like a secret society, making this an exclusive treatment just for men, like a deodorant or cosmetic product.  The weirdness just gets started when the male fantasy gets lost in the world of male delusions, where Norton gets disconnected from his own sense of purpose, lost in a kind of Kafkaesque nightmare where he can’t change the track he’s on, as Tyler mysteriously disappears and everything spins out of control.  Without Tyler’s brash aggression, Norton returns back to his endlessly questioning self, the one that whines in utter disgust at what’s happening all around him and is paralyzed by his own indecisiveness.  Fincher creates a nightmarish vision of helplessness, as if Norton is pushed off to the side as a tourist inside his own dream, confined to a state of ambivalent confusion while others step over him with that same newfound sense of zeal and purpose he once had, as new fight clubs pop up across the nation, and new missions are handed out to energized militia types with shaved heads to carry out subversive missions targeting the symbols of corporate power.  It’s like a blitzkrieg of anarchy hitting the streets as the fight club members, suddenly organized and challenging the new world order, have evolved into a lawless netherworld spiraling towards oblivion.  The look of the film is darkly nihilistic, where Pitt brilliantly commands the screen with utter contempt for the world, but beyond that, it’s like finding yourself lost in a maze where those around you start to resemble Hitler’s youth, becoming more and more wretchedly uncomfortable to the point of being nearly unwatchable, feeling overlong and repetitive, where most of the time we’re trapped inside Norton’s lost world.