Scorching

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 1999)

As with so many other big films, there are too many comments for mine not to be lost in the mass, so I'll try to be brief.
The film contains many platitudes about self-realisation, all of which we've heard before, but it sites them in a context so raw and vivid that they emerge fresh, and thereby communicate themselves to the viewer so directly that they become more powerful, more compulsive. If the film finally runs out of steam - because once you're on the destructive rollercoaster, you can't stop until it crashes - its early sequences provide a hard-hitting (no pun intended) and yet stylish approach to the vacuity of modern life (I particularly like the deconstruction of Ikea, as the proud owner of an Ikea futon).
I wrote a novel last year in which the main character, frustrated with the emptiness of his life, is drawn by a somewhat insane other character into more and more extreme behaviour. Having seen Fight Club, I can safely tear up my manuscript, because Fincher and Uhls have conveyed the same message much more powerfully than I was able to.
Fincher's direction may suffer from occasional gimmickry, but even the most apparently gratuitous moments are not without purpose. And Uhls's script is beautifully constructed. This is one of those rare films in which the voice-over technique really works.
Ultimately, this movie is about subversion - not just against social norms, not just against the bourgeois mindset, but even against cinema itself (as shown by the overt subliminal imagery). It's so good to come across something so genuinely radical, with the cinema now over a hundred years old. Good, too, that it came out of a major studio. And good, let's not forget, that this film is extremely funny.
Come on, hit me, you know you want to...