The value of ideas

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2007)

The opening shot of this film is a back tracking shot that first appears to be traveling through some surreal landscape. However, rather quickly you see that it going over someone's skin, meaning it must have been in their body, and not just any part of the body, but the head. The shot starts in someones brain and then moves out of it, which I suppose is analogous to an idea being born and released into the world. That's precisely where the main plot of "Fight Club" starts. Two guys, fed up with the consumer culture just decide to "let go" and release all the stress, by what seems to be, beating the crap out of one another. However, their idea goes quite far beyond an excuse for violence and macho showing off. It is easy to understand it that way, but, many violent movies are misunderstood. Mainly because people tend to look at the violence and recklessness portrayed and not at the fact that all that is incidental to what the film is trying to say.
In fact, the film doesn't serve as an excuse to show violence, it warns us against it, much like "A Clockwork Orange." Violence is shown, in what can only be described as, uncomfortable detail. Men's faces are literally beaten to a pulp, others are thrown down stairs, and one especially discomforting scene has chemicals burning away someone's skin. If that wasn't enough, there are numerous acts of vandalism committed in every form you can imagine. Now the question is, how can such chaos be justified or condoned? The answer is that it can't. The Narrator and Tyler aren't good people, per se, but they aren't evil. A little mad yes, but certainly not evil. They also aren't just criminals, they are victims. Their bizarre course of action is the result that they feel they need to get back at society, not anyone person, hence all the anarchy they cause. Their terms and conditions for doing all this are highly questionable and difficult to condone, but that's the point. "Fight Club" isn't a movie that shows problems and brings answers to the table. It's a movie that shows problems and presents ideas. Once again, this is similar to "A Clockwork Orange" in which the hero (or anti-hero) is given questionable treatment for his out right wrong actions and behavior. "Fight Club" blurs that line of what is condonable and what is not a step further. Here nothing is out right wrong or obviously right. Everything makes enough sense that you accept it as the film progresses, yet it all seems like just a bit too much and the exaggeration is hard to pinpoint. It is just as hard to pinpoint as the "right" and "wrong."
David Fincher previously demonstrated his ability to blur lines of reality and illusion with the masterful "The Game" and here his skills are in full display once again. Like "The Game, "Fight Club" is hard to believe as real or that that something like it could actually happen, but the ideas it presents are important and more than worth examining multiple times. It is an often hilarious, often bizarre, but always thought provoking satire with a great direction from Fincher. The fact that the film was made with a big budget in Hollywood, is all the more interesting. --- 9/10
Rated R for strong violent content. Ages 16+