Fight Dud

Rating: Null/10 (7 October 2001)

The members of Fight Club are hopelessly pathetic junkies who believe self-destruction is the most productive way to counter their failures to be what society tells them they should strive to be, but who they didn't become. In the world of Fight Club, there is no need for aspirations to achieve goals and dreams, so they resort to their counter-programmed, repressed sadistic tendencies for therapy. But what does this accomplish? In the end, the answer is nothing  nothing more than one man's awakening from an eternal dream-state. It is attempting to speak to the dazed and confused among us by way of the ridiculous notion that violence creates an understanding of oneself. The first two hours of "Fight Club" is a stark and vacuous rambling that plays out like a like a wannabe hard-core, tough-guy's movie for Gen Xers who think it's cool to watch grown men smack each other bloody. And herein lies the irony  The film plays up the violence quotient to highlight its characters' worthiness, while we the audience (presumably) cheer these guys on vicariously through cinema, all the while distanced from the film's `your id should dictate your being' holy-otherworldliness. We do not experience what it is like to be Tyler Durden outside the film's reality, and this hypocrisy is something he would frown upon. Those of us not in Fight Club, are we not living? The film gets more ludicrous as it goes, pounding the audience over the head with the idea that an ever-increasing mass audience would continually embrace Fight Club, lead by a loser who succumbs to his dual-personality disorder. But maybe that's the point  we, the audience, are the newest members of Fight Club, and we are the victims of a brutal beat-down on our first night. But we are entertained by it nonetheless. Fight Club is an attack on our senses and sensibilities, one that would make even Tyler Durden jealous. It is a knock on materialism, but a champion of irreverence. Fight Club is an all-encompassing religion-like way-of-life, straight out of the school of hard knocks. It is also a film who's main character must go through an epiphany of violent escapades and unconscious musings before he understands what any `normal' person on the street already knows  that life does offer possibilities and unspecified pinnacles of joy and enlightenment. It does not take a wrong before one can understand productivity and do good. I don't think the film glorifies violence; in fact, it's conclusion puts to rest the edgy leanings that came before it, deploring violence, brutality, and self-destruction as a waste of time and human life. However, morals cannot exist out of context, and the way the filmmakers present them results in an acidic residue inside the minds of the audience. It used to be no blood, no foul; now it's no blood, no self-fulfillment. I guess pain really is love. The film's ultimate effect is one of wanting you to treat it as a non-sentimental, non-preachy statement on human behavior and aspirations, but lacks an excuse for us to do so. Violence brings out the best in all of us, right Tyler?