Great Films Club for Fight Club.

Rating: 7/10 (15 October 2006)

If we're all just "polishing the brass on the titanic", and everything is going down anyway, what's the point? You get up in the morning, you go to school, study and succeed with the hope of one day becoming a doctor, a lawyer or a whatever. But if we know as we do that humanity will cease to exist in the near future, what with global warming and all, why do we bother improving existence? Shouldn't we give in to the beast we all know exists inside man? For the little time we have left, isn't a better idea to destroy, fight and kill? Anarchy seems to be the best thing to abide by in these dark times. Of course, David Fincher's Fight Club doesn't advocate these ideas; it brings them up in order for us, the viewers, to think of reasons why they are wrong.
With recourse to the everyman, Edward Norton's character, only known as the Narrator, Fight Club involves us in the film. We are the Narrator. We are the ones who need every piece of furniture in Ikea catalogues for our homes in order to feel whole. However, the everyman in the film happens to have a day only seen in the movies, but we still identify with him: His luggage is lost at the airport, his house blows up and all his possessions, even the furniture, are gone. As a direct result, he is no longer a person because his possessions have been destroyed.
Now he meets a guy, Tyler Durden, who tells him he could be more than his possessions, he could be free of the superficial society which creates the needs he does not ("in the hunter-gatherer sense") actually have. He could be, that is, if he hits his friend as hard as he can.
Our Narrator does; he likes it. Soon enough, other young men begin to like it too. These young men are also tired of mindless work which consists of helping a society that just enslaves them more as they make it more powerful. What's the point? So they all listen to Tyler, a fervent leader of men who initiates a club in which, every night, these young men can pound on each other. As they experience real freedom through pain and domination, Tyler, the giver of this wonderful experience, hands out homework assignments. His minions happily execute.
This is how anarchy begins: A fervent and relentless leader with the wrong idea. I will not divulge any more, because of the many surprises this film has near the end. Any film with these ideas can just as easily fail. Fight Club does not. It is masterfully wrapped in a package of light, sound and images by David Fincher. The film looks good and has the smarts to back it up.
Proponents of classic films see modern day cinema as being all style and no substance. Scenes are cut too fast to even get a feel for them, a little gift, they say, from television. Well I say look at Fight Club. What we have isn't so bad. It makes us think as well as being entertained.
Edward Norton gives us many performances in one: he is an insomniac who knows there's a void in his life but doesn't have the will power to fill it, preferring to merely go through the motions of a life headed nowhere. Then he becomes "enlightened", finds meaning. Then he discovers what his life really is... Brad Pitt is a charismatic leader able to subdue any lost soul. Helena Bonham-Carter has fun with her intermediary character.
Great acting and great directing have always been essential to great films. So has being thought provoking, and you know what? For 7 years ever since its release, everyone has been talking about it. It hasn't stopped; even people who hate it love to talk about it.
So should we just stop our productive lives? Boys, let's just pound each other because, hey, it's more productive then anything we're doing now. It liberates us, for a given time period, because short term desire satisfaction is more useful than anything else. Somebody please prove that wrong, because that's what the film wants us to do, and I'll be damned if Tyler Durden is right.