A SOON-TO-BE CLASSIC

Rating: Null/10 (7 June 2000)

I just watched Fight Club. I had heard the mixed reviews, which mainly said that it was all about violence. I did not realise it was a black comedy about the hidden need for man to find value in his existence. With clever, scathing dialogue and brilliantly subtle humour, Fight Club stands a pivotal crossroad between Edward Norton's riveting performance in American History X and Brad Pitt's gifted insanity in 12 Monkeys. Nowhere until the very end can there be any understanding of the script. Somewhere around the two-hour mark, we pause as we did in The Sixth Sense and let our minds journey back throughout the brutal ecstasy of the events that led us blindly up this garden path of destruction. Admittedly, this is not a film for everyone. A strong stomach is required for the bare-fisted scenes, which spew blood and guts mercilessly into our bags of popcorn, drenched in the urine someone had the audacity to label butter. Helen Bonham-Carter plays primal modern man's conception of residual modern woman, with f**k me written all over her in every scene she plays; f**k me, like the cancer-ridden woman at one of the support groups the needful Norton attends at the start of the film, whose one last hope in life before her body lays her waste is to get laid by some, by any, man. This is a film about man versus man versus the machine versus God versus himself. Brad Pitt plays a travelling soap salesman. But nothing short of amnesia will be able to wash away the effect of this soon to be rated classic. And this, my friends, a film with no Oscar nominations, is why I do not watch The Awards.