One of the best movies ever made?

Rating: 10/10 (22 May 2008)

The first time I saw Fight Club, I didn't really take it in - I was tired and bored and not in the mood for a dark and depressing film like this. We turned it off halfway through, after about 90 minutes of not paying attention. What a mistake that was.
I watched it again several months later when it was being shown on TV. Being only 13, I failed somewhat to absorb the deeper themes and concepts of the film but was highly, highly entertained by the Joe Everyman tale of a person so bored, unhappy and in the need of change in their life (it reminded me very, very much of American Beauty in this regard).
Three years on, I watched it for the third time and it absolutely blew me away. Pretty much everything about it is perfect - plot, acting, direction, music - it all combined into a single perfect narrative package.
Where do I start? The acting is out of this world. I can't claim to have seen many of Edward Norton's movies (in fact, only this and American History X), but his performance here was brilliant as the aforementioned Joe Everyman who also provides excellent, often deadpan narration that not only propels the story but is entertaining and even funny, a rare feat. As for Brad Pitt, until I saw Fight Club I had dismissed him as another pretty-boy, somewhat-talented actor more suited to romantic comedies than dark dramas. How wrong I was. His acting abilities are in full flight as the suave and confident antagonist of the story, Tyler Durden. Helena Bonham Carter is also great as usual, playing the leading lady (of sorts), Marla Singer.
Or the story, based on the book by Chuck Palahniuk. While it essentially retains a simple three-act plot, it constantly twists and turns as to never let the viewer remove their eyes from the screen for even a second. This is NOT a movie about fighting. The overwhelming theme of the film is of anti-consumerism and challenging the values systems that have been put in place through advertising. The fighting itself serves as a way for the characters to escape from their repetitive, depressing, boring and most importantly sterile lives and experience feeling that the material objects deemed so important by their values system cannot give them.
Director David Fincher produces one of the finest directorial efforts of recent times. The mise-en-scene he generates is terrific - harsh, sterile, postmodern - and there are several scenes that showcase his mastery of some unusual camera techniques. His directing here is strange in the best possible way. One particular short fantasy scene on a plane especially stands out.
Fincher was concerned that traditional film music bands wouldn't be able to tie all the film's themes together, so he recruited the Dust Brothers, an electronica duo who had never recorded for a movie before. What a contribution they make. The score is postmodern, sterile, and artificial-sounding, perfectly in keeping with the ideas in the film. It also manages to create a mood without usually being noticeable, a difficult trick to pull off correctly.
While loved and hated by equal numbers of critics, Fight Club is undeniably one of the greatest films for many years, probably the best of the 90's. Go and see it - you won't regret the experience, even if you don't think it's 'your kind' of film.