It's okay to talk about Fight Club

Rating: Null/10 (8 July 2000)

Outlaw freedom of speech. Kill the dissident voices. Suffocate satire. It is too dangerous to let the masses think for themselves. The Nazi's thought so. So do the morally righteous conservative authorities who tell us all that is wrong about FIGHT CLUB.
Is the film dangerous? I guess. It is ambiguous, satirical, and self-consciously cool. Does that make it bad? Of course not. The film condemns materialistic narcissism as much as AMERICAN BEAUTY. However, FIGHT CLUB is funnier, angrier, and it sticks to its guns.
The allusion to fascism is loud and clear, people are upset at the light in which the FIGHT CLUB is painted, the lack of outward condemnation. The violence hurts. But the men consent to it, they need to feel something. It transpires, of course, to be a false dawn.
Alexander Walker didn't like the unpleasant overtones. Which is strange, because the film FIGHT CLUB most resembles was directed by his old chum, Stanley Kubrick. Fincher's film bears more than a passing nod to the mischievous mayhem of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. In both cases the malevolent satire was a guilty pleasure.
With it's kinetic, hypnotic visual style, Fincher's film is style and substance mixed perfectly. That it connects with an audience (most likely young male) is because it is an astutely written product of it's environment. Generation terrorism never looked so good.