The defining movie of the NEXT decade

Rating: 10/10 (12 February 2000)

Fight Club was a box office disappointment perhaps because no one really knew what to make of it. A lot of people went in to see Brad Pitt and Edward Norton pounding each other, and instead got a subversive satire of consumerism and the cult mentality.
The movie may not have been appreciated in 1999, but I'll bet it will quickly become a classic. The recent protests at the WTO meetings in Seattle showed that a backlash is brewing against rampant consumerism, and while I don't necessarily agree with what many of the anti-WTO demonstrators were saying, I get a feeling this movement is going to build up steam as this new decade proceeds.
And Fight Club speaks to that mentality. Edward Norton plays a recall investigator for a major car company (he decides whether it makes financial sense to announce a recall) who has turned to a life of conspicuous consumption to fill his spiritual void. (In one astonishing sequence, he literally walks into an IKEA catalog.) Then he meets Tyler Durden, who introduces him to the underground world of "Fight Clubs" - where men who feel emasculated gather to get back to their roots by pounding the tar out of each other. But as Norton's character is sucked into this exciting new world, his new compatriots decide to expand into society at large - with potentially disastrous consequences.
Many have called Fight Club a fascist movie (the debate was eerily similar to what surrounded "Starship Troopers" in 1997) and I think this is way off the mark. Instead, the message is that if society trys to reduce a man to a simple consumer, aimlessly following trends, he will inevitably lash out. This one will be watched, studied and debated long after, say, "The General's Daughter" has been forgotten.