Brilliant. Stunning. Soapy.

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2000)

Geared toward the young professional male and the sheer despair in the search for meaning in life, this film exposes the lies of both consumerism and so-called "spirituality" that so pervades middle-class life. Instead of turning to meditation, crystals, chakras, self-help groups and other New-Age dreck, *Fight Club* unflinchingly turns toward the material--meaning is found through mutually-consentual physical suffering. In a life so anxiously inured from any physical discomfort as the yuppie life is, the narrator (Edward Norton) seeks refuge not in enlightenment through spiritual uplifting, but through material degradation.
The one thing that most Americans hate to face is the very fact of their own materiality and mortality--*Fight Club* forces them to acknowledge it without resorting to time-worn situations such as war, economic hardship, or old age. Only when one gives up the narcissistic fascination with one's own comfort does one truly confront one's mortality--and, by extension, one's vitality.
Why the choice of soap for Tyler Durden's (Brad Pitt) trade? If, as Freud (and others) noted that soap is the marker of civilization, this film exposes that this marker is at base just as barbaric as the civilization on which it purports to depend. If one is not utterly revolted by the scene in which the raw materials for Durden's trade are gathered, one isn't human.
Brad Pitt and Edward Norton give outstanding performances, and David Fincher's astonishing technical mastery and excellent penchant for dark moods (as well as dark humor) takes what could in others' hands be a moralistic didacticism and crafts a magnificent document of both despair and hope (although not the kind of hope one would expect).
This is not a film for those looking for mere entertainment nor for those who are satire-impaired (i.e. those who, after seeing the film want to start a fight club of their own); but those looking for a film that is both visually stunning and thoughtful should view it immediately.