Before seeing "Fight Club" on it's openi...

Rating: Null/10 (16 October 1999)

Before seeing "Fight Club" on it's opening night, I had read the reviews of a few critics who applauded the film and made strong comments about the film's level of violence (two critics likened the violent impact of the film to Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange"). What really struck me was that this obvious satire wasn't really that physically violent if you don't mind watching a bunch of men beat each other to a pulp. But I did realize violence in "Fight Club" in another way; a realization that was repulsive, provocative, and at once very attractive...violence of spirit.
Once I copped on to what was actually happening in the films story line, the lead character of the narrator (played by Edward Norton) immediately reminded me of the Victorian-era French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud was a young man who felt sickened by the commonplace, decadent posing of his contemporaries (and society in general), and eventually became known for violence and rebelliousness in his poems and his life, in his attempt to quash the numbness of his spirit.
I would hesitate to classify "Fight Club" as a "movie for men", even though it chooses a metaphor that suggests "Iron John on crack". "Fight Club" attempts to capture a malaise that is tentatively felt by an entire generation (perhaps only a western generation) who find themselves adrift in life, suspended in personal bubbles, separated from notions of passion, spontaneity, and each other. A generation who's bible is brought to you by "Large Corporate Marketing Firm". The shocking thing about "Fight Club" is that the metaphor is not that much "larger than life", and it offers little if viewed only as "an entertainment". Thousands of young people will watch this film with mouths agape, seeing themselves reflected on the screen. Critics will applaud the film's clever detraction of "consumer branding" in our lives, while the implications are far more extreme. Earlier, I consciously chose the word "separated" over "disconnected"...not wanting to betray my own instinct to use a technological term to describe a human condition. After I post this note and turn off my computer, I will go out into the Saturday sunshine and strive to "reach out and touch someone."