Cult Classic

Rating: 10/10 (27 June 2016)

Now don't get me wrong. Fight Club is one of my top 10 favourite films ever, and I don't exactly have any problems with the film itself. What I do take issue with is the extremely limited view of the film that is taken on by teenage boys who seem to view this film as great, but only because of its anti-establishment message and seemingly rebellious views on consumerism. To these people, Fight Club is a rebel's film. A chance to be different and a validation as such, but the issue is that it is none of these things. It is a parody of these messages, a parody of the anti-consumerist culture and grunge movement of the 90's. The message is right in front of our faces for the entire movie and nobody seems to pick up on it. I'll get more into all this after some comments on our director.
David Fincher is a genius in the way that he creates mood. If you have seen Seven, Gone Girl or The Social Network you will notice that you are able to grasp the mood of his pieces quite easily. His nihilist style is a definite departure from some of the more visual, Steadicam-like work of other modern directors like Paul Thomas Anderson and Guillermo Del Toro, and he uses this to separate himself from the pack in some ways. He is not poetic in his visuals, but he is subtle. Empty space and profile shots could be filler for some, but Fincher uses them to say something about what he is showing, or not showing in some cases, and I think Fight Club is an excellent example. Now, I'll provide a brief exposition, I guess.
Our unnamed protagonist, whom we will call Jack, is suffering from insomnia. He can't sleep, he cant function, and because his life is taken up by his job, products, and TV shows, he has fallen into IKEA oblivion. He finds solace in support groups for diseases he doesn't have, but this doesn't last long. Things finally start to look up after he meets Tyler Durden, who helps him discover there is more to life than consuming products. Or that there is less to life than consuming products. It's hard to tell.
The movie takes a lot of turns and if you have seen or heard of this film before, you'll know that there's a brilliant twist ending (which I wont spoil) but I think people put too much stock in it. Fight Club is seen by many as great only because of this twist ending, without realising that almost everything Fincher has done in this movie has contributed to the overall meaning of the film, and the twist ending is merely a distraction, a shortcut to a very simple explanation of the films themes, but with none of the extra flesh. If you want to really get into the nature of this film, you have to take in every shot, every line of dialogue, every trash can, every street name. Fincher has made it harder for us than you think.
I think something that many people fail to see in this film is the message it has about masculinity, and our drive to be anti- establishment in order to achieve this goal. The film says a lot about how men feel that their masculinity has been taken away from them by the consumer culture that encourages men to work for others, be domestic, have children and own pets. Men in this fictional world are never encouraged to rebel, they are never encouraged to return to their caveman-like ways and be themselves, free from their trappings. But where people slip up is how they interpret this. The film is not glorifying the violent anti-establishment culture, it is merely parodying it. A real-life Fight Club is such a simple yet flawed idea. The men in this film cannot get past their testosterone-filled psyche and therefore cannot move past such simple ideas. Project Mayhem is a pointless farce, depicted by Tyler as a group of "enlightened" folk who reject franchise and work for themselves, yet by the end of the film, Tyler has set up franchises all over the country, and the men are merely working for him, slaving away for Tyler's endless power trip. The film is a giant contradiction, and as it begins to pile back upon itself, the space between becomes warped, and wormholes start to form. Connections are made and the plot starts to connect and disconnect and spin wildly out of control the more you think about it, and it becomes a giant spider's web of emotions and memories, much like the inside of a human brain, which is shown in the opening credits.
Fight Club was the first movie I watched that made me more interested in film as an art form, and arguably it was the first film that I ever loved, and my first love has to have a place on this list. This film will always hold a place in my heart as a complex masterpiece misinterpreted as a simplistic masterpiece. Everyone thinks they know everything about this film, but nobody will, and I hope that one day people can look past its distractions and understand the puzzle within it, or at least try to.
10/10