The things you own ends up owning you.

Rating: 10/10 (27 September 2001)

What's fascinating in David Fincher's work,is that it seems we deal with an auteur.He created his own universe,a nocturnal and filthy one,and a bit misogynous too:it's glaring in this movie;outside Bonham-Carter-made look ugly and dressed as a 1977 punk-,only a black woman has a line to say.Almost everywhere,it is a man's man's world where no women appear even in the settings.
This movie was influenced by famous and not-so-famous predecessors:of course "Dr Jekill and Mister Hide" to which Bonham Carter hints at in the restaurant,"a clockwork orange" ,"rebel without a cause" "bad influence" and Joel Schumacher's "falling down",the latter seems with hindsight to have been overlooked and underrated.
So why does this movie seem so original?it owes a lot to E.Norton (more than Pitt)who had already overshadowed R.Gere in "primal fear".Here he plays a very strange kind of peeping tom:watching mental suffering (therapy groups ,dealing almost essentially with male problems),then physical sufferings,eventually enduring them.Does he do that as he would opt for yoga,Buddhism or psychotherapy,to escape from a routine work?To get free from the material world?As Pitt says "the things you..."The problem is that Norton does not seem to be so free.At first,he may be, when he's only a simple spectator-and the scenes in the restaurant and in the projection room are peaks of black humor-,but,he's potentially a Stevensonian hero.
There's a big coup de theatre in this movie, a breathtaking and unexpected twist ,à la "sixth sense" ,"Jacob's ladder" or" Usual suspects" ,and it's difficult to comment this movie :all you say is questioned when you KNOW.Of course I won't reveal it,but I think it's the biggest flaw of the movie.Unlike the three mentioned works,this does not seem logical,because of the lack of "clues":the only one ,regarding Bonham-Carter, is not really convincing.
The last picture seems now terrifying.