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Fight
Club
****
Cinema
Releases - November 12, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by David Fincher. Written by Jim Uhls; based on the
novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Starring
Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter,
Jared Leto, Meat Loaf.
"When I'm with you, baby, I go out of my head...
and I just can't get enough... I just can't get
enough..."
That Depeche Mode lyric is about love, but the
principle contained therein describes more dangerous emotions too. Anyone
who has ever tried to argue against the will of a crowd knows how easily
nonsensical passions can get out of hand when screamed loud enough. And in
David Fincher's "Fight Club", we witness simple dissatisfaction
with modern consumerism degenerate into fascism and terrorism in a terrifyingly
believable progression.
Edward Norton plays the film's fed-up narrator,
a slave to yuppie trends who spends sleepless nights browsing Ikea catalogues
for a dining set that will define him as a person and pointless days fiddling
figures for a corrupt car corporation. Nicknamed 'Jack' after the proverbial
dull boy, our hero is finally able to cure his insomnia by attending the
meetings of cheesy support groups, where people stick on friendly nametags
and weep about their diseases and infatuations. He takes comfort in knowing
that so many folks are in such worse pain than he is.
Then he begins to notice that scruffy, chain-smoking
mystery woman Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) is also attending several different
groups. She must be another fraud, and if the people he's gone to witness
aren't genuine, Jack figures, then what's the point? It's back to square
one... but only temporarily, because Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman
who knows how to relax in all the ways Jack can't, soon comes into the narrator's
life.
Tyler looks cool in the wildest clothes imaginable
and smokes cigarettes all day without getting a cough. He's witty, challenging,
nice to be around. And when he lures Jack into a bare-knuckle boxing match,
putting him in touch with raw feelings, he offers better therapy than any
tearful support session. The pair start Fight Club -- an organised society
of men escaping the pressure of day-to-day life by pummelling each other
into bloody pulp -- and since the group's meetings encourage camaraderie,
release of tension and rushes of adrenaline, the idea is a hit. So to
speak.
Up to this point, "Fight Club" has involved us
not only with breathlessly energetic pacing and intriguing dreamlike structure,
but with a tone of cheerfully subversive satirical comedy. We nod at mockery
of the phoney, processed, single-serving products and hammy infomercials
that have invaded our world. And we even understand why Fight Club may seem
appealing to those who can't take it anymore.
When the Fight Club turns into Project Mayhem
-- a carefully orchestrated program of vandalism, demolition and brainwashing,
with Fight Club members as soldiers -- we the audience share Jack's disgust
at how far off the rails Tyler has gone. But more importantly, we've gained
an insight into how easily people like him, and Adolf Hitler, attain that
level of control... playing on understandable fears, creating an understandable
solution, and using their influence to coax followers ever so gradually into
things they would never have dreamed of doing. A twist even later in the
tale, which is much more simple and realistic than it initially appears,
provides an explanation as to how such intelligent people become dictatorially
inclined.
"Fight Club" is cleverly constructed to explore
such grand ideas, its comedy not present to make light of the serious issues,
but to make us more receptive to them. The cool charisma of Norton and Pitt
is equally vital in seducing us, and both actors carry themselves confidently
while speaking their dialogue with tough, throaty assurance. I like the way
their performances develop, as the former man becomes progressively panicky
and the latter's dangerous humour seems ever more deranged. Bonham Carter,
convincingly American, wisely creates an unpredictable wild woman who, like
the movie itself, can be at turns hilarious and provocative.
America -- as far as most outsiders can tell --
has become a society so afraid of repression that the people can no longer
deal with problems in their own minds, and feel incomplete if they can't
spill their guts to analysts, groups of fellow losers or talk-show hosts.
I've long believed that this is a dangerous climate, which leads to such
tragedies as the Heaven's Gate Cult suicides and the Columbine High School
massacre. "Fight Club" shows how, and manages to be amusing at the same time.
It's a breathtaking balancing act, in one of the year's best
films.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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