The best film ever?(Possible SPOILERS, pass by if you haven't seen it.)

Rating: Null/10 (22 January 2000)

The first rule of fight club is you don't talk about fightclub so I won....Oh,shut up. Well, we've all seen it (more than once too) and most of us loved it so what's left to say? Well, I want to praise you like I should, as the song goes. This is a film I shouldn't have liked as it's yet another cartoon from America and I tried hard not to. Glip? Trite ? Meritricious?....but to no avail, I'm doomed to love this genuinely gobsmacking picture. The one fault it has is it's ten minutes too long. You think: "Guys, I love you, but you're exhausting me so let's rap it up", which they do with such a spine tingling, poignant and phenomenal ending that you forgive it even that flaw. The song over the end titles was so hot I stayed right to the end. It's rare you leave an American film thinking it's the best film ever made and the most fun you've ever had in a theatre. Many couldn't accept the plot twist and I think this is because they loved the character in question so much. The radical and brave departure was right though. It made for a funnier and more truthful film as most men aren't supercool like that. Others have complained that the film doesn't take a clear stand and leaves you to have to make up your own mind. Surely this is it's virtue and what makes it so unusual? Is it profound or just a comedy about a man who goes mad? Is the ending optimistic or does it say that trying to change your life or society is futile or unattainable due to man's inherent flaws and vanities? Script, direction and performances are masterly and will set the bench mark for others to beat for years to come, not that film making is a race. There are so many great lines and observations that it's almost four films in one. The scene where Durden speculates that god may, in fact, hate you is a whole theme for a film in itself. There are some nice in-jokes. I presume the narrator wanted to fight William Shatner because of that Star Trek episode 'Shore Leave' where Kirk has an outrageously long and violent punch up with a man called Finnegan who is not real. It all ties in. The film's ending may go along more conventional lines with a ticking bomb but I suspect this is just to send up guy movies whereby someone has to always decide which wire to pull. And this is the ultimate guy pic. Another reviewer below made the astute observation that the film is really quite humane and the humour is never sarcastic but has a more Zen like reflectiveness. That's on the money. Whether you like the film will depend on your sense of humour which varies from person to person. It pokes fun at men and our need to follow others as well as other foibles. It is also ambivalent and unjudgemental about our need for aggression and excitement. I remember about three years I thought about asking my sister's commanlaw husband to have a punch up with me just for fun. I don't know why, but it proves the film is on to something. At the end of the day this film may just be rock and roll, a fun picture not to be taken too seriously. I think it was Tarkovsky who said that lots of editing and trying to entertain an audience visually was inimicable to great art. This film pulls off the trick of both leading you on and also being very wide open. It may fall into the trap of trying to make the lead character more sympathetic to the audience by making him appear ignorant of his own mayhem, and empathy is good box office, but as I said before you really have to clutch at straws to criticise this stunning and outrageous picture. The studio who financed it took a risk in making a film with content you'd expect to see in an indi feature, so reward their faith by going to see this picture or there won't be another for a long time.