Very dark satire on life.

Rating: 10/10 (24 May 2000)

Fight Club is truely an electric film. From the amazing intro right up to the end, there is no denying that Fight Club is like no other film you have ever seen. Shot with Fincher's scorching style, be amazed wit the floating cameras, hopping reels, zooming microscopic lens, fake reel dots, subliminal images and set pieces moving so fast, if you blink you might miss it. The story itself is slightly disturbing, but it is shot in a sort of sarcastic, satirical way (helped greatly by Norton's brilliant narration). Fight Club is at times dark, disturbing and horrible and of course, without any doubt - controversial. Our narrator (Jack) is a clinically diagnosed insomniac and narcaleptic who seeking some way of escaping his pain, finds comfort in going along to support groups for men with testicular cancer, tuberculosis or brain parastites. All goes well untill he meets his match, Marla Simmons. But things go well again after he meets Tyler Durden, who he sets up a Fighting Club with. Things go awry after a while though when Tyler's ambitions rise above that of a Fighting Club and he goes for Project Mayham and begins building an army. The film explores many dark subjects. It is impossible to look at the film as just one subject, it is more like a lot bunched in together. It explores man himself. As in much of the great Stanley Kubrick's films, Fight Club explores the messed-up head of our narrator and tries to find means behind his madness (namely his chronic insomnia). The film explores the eye of an insomniac, schizophrenic, narcaleptic madman and the way he sees his life. The most memorable scenes are towards the begining where Jack tries to explain what it's like not to have slept in 6 months. "Everything is just a copy of a copy of a copy ... everything else gets the volume turned down." These words of wisdom are accompanied by neat visuals, such as close ups of the copier moving back and forward and of his boss chatting with him with (you guessed it) no sound. And one of the most impressive scenes where Jack is staring blankly into his waste bucket at work, soaring majestically through the names of Starbucks, McDonalds .. etc. This is where his hatred of corporations first pops up and is one of many hints to the unpredictable outcome of the film. It's one hell of a film, played out to perfection by the leads (notably Norton) and shot in a scorching style that only Fincher could pull off and with one hell of a background tracking by the Dust Brothers. Sir Fincher, we salute you.