A review to be taken seriously, despite the author...

Fight Club
1999, David Fincher, US/Ger

Ed Norton plays a tired, worn out car sales exec, an insomniac who is living life as if he were dead. The only comfort he finds is in various meet-up groups for testicular cancer (which he doesn’t have) and other problems (which, again, he doesn’t have either). He meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), who looks like she’s popped straight out of a comic book. And then he meets ultra cool soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). Together, they form a fight club, a weekly meet for guys to pummel each other and feel free because of it. But as things escalate out of control, Norton finds that Tyler is overtaking the project into his homemade national anarchy brainchild.

This would be the greatest thinking man’s movie of recent years if it wasn’t so much of an obvious insult. A subversively feel-good film, perhaps, especially if you’re an insomniac businessman with a nagging boss, the thinking man’s equivalent to Scarface (1983). I’ve said thinking man twice (thrice now) already, but don’t let that fool you. For this strives to be the greatest rebellion ever made, to evoke thought and make men all over the world go round picking fights in order to let themselves be free.

As with all glossy, flashy, showy, pretentious, self-referential (so much that it’s up its own arse, unlike, say, Altman’s wonderful The Player, 1992) films, this looks good, sounds good, acts good, and even feels good. But it isn’t. Because, for every message this film has, there’s also a downside: that it’s all a sadomasochistic fantasy, impossible to take seriously. The Oscar-winner of 1999, American Beauty, was also about a man finding himself through rebellion—during a mid-life crisis no less. But while that film had genuine sentiment and the ability to move, Fincher’s film attacks its audience and abandons them.

Fincher’s stylish credit sequence for Seven (1995) still sends shivers down its audience’s spines. It’s inventive, classily dirty, and really sets the pace for the film. Here we have a tour of a brain, which gives a fair indication of what this film is too: a cerebral revision of what masculinity actually means in today’s world. Take it or leave it, but it’s going to tell its story whether we agree or not. And, in the end, who can blame Fincher? At least this tries to do something different, and as a film to get up after and feel ready to backchat your boss tomorrow morning, it succeeds admiringly.

The acting is also a delight. Carter looks as if she’s walked onto the wrong set. She’s not, however, all that different from her male counterparts. In fact, she’s exactly the same: heartless, cardboard, a walking zombie, more or less. Pitt is as charismatic as ever, flexing his lean body about as if in an advert; at one point in the film, Norton asks him if a guy advertising designer boxer shorts is a real man, and Pitt laughs—intentional or not, the irony in his reaction mocks himself more than the guy in the advert. Norton is perfect for the role; he has a rare stuttering quality to his humour—I’d love to see him in a Woody Allen film—and his voice-over, on which the film relies so much for dramatic ironies (the recurring “I am Jack’s…” phrases are brilliant) is delivered with a lipsmacking lack of emotion. Perfect.

So, why isn’t this film as fantastic as many people say it is? It’s in the patronising delivery. A cinematic treat, with beautifully smooth pans, tracks, CGI and adrenalin-pumping fight scenes, the film fails to show any moral depth or quality. It comes dangerously close to glorifying its violence—no wait, it does glorify its violence. There’s something mightily attractive in the way Pitt spits his own blood out onto Lou, the tough-guy owner in charge of the basement where fight club takes place. The final “Gotcha” twist isn’t really twist: it’s been there all along, with Pitt popping up at various points before his character even talks. And if we’re blown away by the ending, we haven’t been watching the film closely enough; we’ve been distracted by the voice-over, blood, and darkly witty mise-en-scène (though Seven’s still seems far more apt and effective), and have failed to discover the film’s narrow-minded shallowness.

But of course, at the end of all this, it seems any critical analysis is unnecessary and worthless. Judging by the book with critical quotes which comes with the Region 2 DVD, the makers encourage such disclaiming scrutiny. In true pompous fashion, they’d probably turn around and say they intended it this way. Oops.

I am Jack’s frustratingly disappointed and unstretched brain.

Thanks for reading,
Mick