Most Folks Utterly Miss The Point (spoilers)

Rating: 4/10 (1 April 2002)

I saw "Fight Club", and, mostly, I was bored. The amazing thing about the movie isn't the movie itself but how the vast majority of people who see it -- especially men 16-40 -- see it through machismo-colored glasses and never really 'see' it.
"Fight Club" is not about consumerism or evil corporations or even about fighting. It's about the dangers of homophobia, plain and simple, about being deep in the closet and being angry about it.
As such, it's a hit-and-miss film, with good moments and bad. One of its major drawbacks is a wildly inconsistent tone, a common problem with satire. But let's look at what so many viewers somehow miss.
Start with the trail of bread crumbs that begins with Tyler Durden dressing like he shops for clothes in Ru Paul's trash. Watch Jack hug a man with enormous breasts and no testicles and hear him say how it's oddly comforting. Watch him and Tyler 'share' a woman who is, in fact, more masculine than either of them.
Watch dozens of men join a secret, no-girls club (an underground social movement) in which they can't keep their shirts on or their hands off of each other. Watch as this club turns into an adoring cult. Watch as they scorn women -- especially women who use liposuction to 'artificially' try to be sexy and appealing to men. Listen to all the dialogue complaining about emasculation, about how the world won't let you just be a man.
Yes, very subtle. The 'twist' at the end is like an exclamation point, and the falling phallic towers, and the gun-fellatio, and the unending symbolism of self-love / self-hate are a tad over the top.
Why do these men fight each other? Because they're too deep in the closet to express their feelings any other way. Why do so many men who see this movie miss this searchlight glaring in their eyes? You be the judge.
The movie is clearly intentionally surreal, so why anyone would take it at face value is beyond me. The fighting -- contrary to what many people absurdly claim -- is desperately unrealistic, no more realistic than the fighting in a typical 1970's kung fu film and less interesting to watch. No one who's seen or been in a real fight -- that they were sober enough to remember clearly -- could say that the fighting in the movie is realistic.

Nothing in the movie is realistic past the point where Jack meets Durden. The story is the fever-dream of a deeply conflicted man. It's not even subtle about it. The first act of the movie -- pre-Durden -- is all right, and pretty original, but once Durden shows up the film spirals down into drawn-out repetition and heavy-handed symbolism, becoming more and more hyperbolic and tiresome.
I mean, OK, OK -- homophobia and repression are bad. But the movie doesn't have much of a point if the audience leaves the theater without a clue.