Breaking the First Two Rules

Rating: 10/10 (19 April 2002)

When I first saw Fight Club, it blew me away; I absolutely ate it up. The film itself is superbly acted, well written (screenplay as well as original novel), and masterfully directed, with exceptionally skillful and subtle use of special effects. One can really tell that this movie was a labor of love for everyone involved, from David Fincher to Rhett Wooden.*
More than this, though, it was the message that got to me. This movie in no small part led to a drastic shift in my personal outlook on life and my critical perspective. I became highly sensitive to - and critical of - uncontrolled consumerism, individual insulation, and media manipulation, among other things. I can honestly say that this movie helped change my life.
After time and subsequent viewings, however, I have become more critical of Fight Club. Isn't Tyler Durden - and thus, through his less-than-subtle preachiness, the movie itself - practicing the same force-feeding of ideology on Ed Norton's narrator and his "space monkeys" that he spends the whole movie railing against? Isn't this movie, as a prepackaged, glitzy media spectacle, just another element of the mass media fixation and dependency that the narrator is trying to escape? Other critics have said as much, and denounced the movie for hypocrisy and didacticism.
However, one ought to consider the idea that the medium itself is always a part of the message. The movie itself hints at this, as Brad Pitt's mischievous character (think Puck meets Travis Bickle) splices pornographic images into movies even as the viewer sees images of Brad spliced into Fight Club occasionally. Think the irony of Hollywood Hunk Brad Pitt cast as the character who proclaims, "We're all brought up to believe that we'll be movie gods and rock stars, but we won't," is accidental?
If someone watches Fight Club and latches on to the message with intensity, like I did, then obviously that person needed to hear what Tyler Durden had to say, and had to hear it from Brad Pitt's famous & attractive mouth. Conversely, if someone watches Fight Club and is able to say "that movie, while nicely executed, is overly preachy and hypocritical in its stated purpose," then that someone is independent enough of media not to need the media/cultural liberation that Fight Club preaches.
That's what Fight Club's about, really - breaking free from cultural restraint of all kinds, even the restraints that allowed the genesis of that freedom. It's about questioning everything - especially ads, magazines, TV, and - you guessed it - big-budget movies that tell you how to live your life. So, while I've become more critical of Fight Club than I was originally, I only respect the movie that much more for its ability to subject itself to the same scrutiny it gives everything else.
For these reasons and more, Fight Club is one of the best movies of the decade, and may well prove to be one of the defining movies of our generation, like The Graduate for the 60s and Saturday Night Fever for the 70s.
I highly recommend consumption of Fight Club in any form, although this is one rare instance where I think film is the better-suited medium over print. I do have a beef with the movie's adaptation of the ending (considerably happier than the novel's), but that just enforces the idea that the movie itself isn't free from the trappings of Hollywood.
The DVD is especially high-quality, with insightful commentary from the novelist, screenwriter, director, and main players (notably film buff Norton).
9.5/10

*David Fincher is the director. Rhett Woodon is the best boy grip. In Fight Club, everyone has a name.