The mixed morals are thankfully only an afterthought...

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2015)

And so I returned to my fear of watching IMDb Top 10 films for the first time with "Fight Club", worried what I was going to think of it and afraid that I seemingly be the only person that didn't like it. By the end of the film, my fears were mostly quelled, but there was still a niggling feeling that something wasn't quite right. I couldn't immediately see what point "Fight Club" was trying to make, and for me it felt like it had mixed morals, but those are merely an afterthought in what is a stylish, humorous and very well acted movie.
The unnamed narrator of the film is played by Edward Norton, and provides witty and nihilistic commentary throughout the film. His life is boring, he is an insomniac with mental health issues that go even deeper than that, and he needs to find some excitement. He starts going to support groups for the terminally ill just so that he can feel emotional outlet, a method that's also carried out by Helena Bonham Carter's character. It's a foul idea, but the film very nearly makes you able to see where they're coming from. On a flight one day, he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), and sees a man that is everything that he's ever wanted to be – successful, exciting, daring, attractive, not stuck in a boring day-to-day job. The Narrator and Durden start spending more time together, and that's when things get crazy.
Through the pair's setting up of a Fight Club, initially as a substitute for the support groups, but eventually as a training ground for their minions, we are subjected to a horrific amount of violence and animalism. The Narrator gets carried away, spurred on by Durden, and they embark on "Project Mayhem", an operation whose sole intention is to mess stuff up and 'destroy capitalism'. It is only after a sudden blackout from Norton's character that we are provided with our twist, a discovery that changes the entire meaning of the film, and the final half hour does an extremely good job of working out and justifying that.
It's a film that is held up by its performances and styling. Norton and Pitt work off each other extremely well, with Norton's narration providing an interesting and witty commentary over the bleak events of the movie. In a film as dark as this, finding yourself laughing really does make you look at yourself. Bonham Carter is brilliant, yet severely underused, and her character could have been made so much more prominent to provide a bit more of the "twisted moral compass" that she seems to have. The film is shot through a darkened lens, which superbly captures the rainy, dingy and crumbling world that the characters inhabit.
"Fight Club" is a film with a message, shown by The Narrator's eventual rejection of Durden's ways and philosophy, but only just. He doesn't want to become like him, ruining everything and destroying things for the sake of it. The problem I have with the film is the way that it gets there – in displaying the violent and anarchistic build up to its lead character's rejection of those ways, it glamourises it. The whole point of the film is that we too are taken in as followers of Tyler Durden and his ways, and I worry that, even though the actual Fight Club scenes are only a small part of the film, their extreme nature does more harm than good. It may not be advocating violence, but to people who don't quite absorb its message, it may seem like it does.
Despite the hype and huge cult following of the film, it's not Fincher's best work. It has great set-pieces, performances and visuals, but the plot occasionally jumps around confusingly and the message has a tendency to feel muddled. It is worth watching and for the vast majority of the runtime really enjoyable, but perhaps my best advice would be not to read too deeply into it.