bizarre equals brilliant

Rating: 8/10 (27 April 2000)

Fight Club is bizarre, yet perfectly normal. It is a movie that's climax is everything to the plot, the characters, and the many subtle themes that permeate the film. This climax is somewhat confusing and unquestionably strange, but despite its peculiarity, it has the effect of normalizing the film. Edward Norton and Brad Pitt play two young firebrands disillusioned by the norms of society who start an organization of men like themselves. It is a club of men who fight each other barehanded and without protection for recreation. However, although the fighting is not fueled by hate, it is very impassioned and as David Fincher's direction presents, extremely graphic. While this fight club serves as the center of the film, there are so many other intricate themes in the movie which in the end, prove to be much more important than the organization. The complexity of this movie was just so engrossing that I had to pause it several times just to ponder how the themes of the movie were forming. Edward Norton's character was extremely complex but entirely believable, despite the peculiarity of his personality. Fight Club is a film about how one man searches for freedom from the norms of his life, how he is alienated by the firm that employs him and corporate society in general, how he longs to join or form organizations to better his life, and how he realizes how he really enjoys something that initially disconcerted him greatly. This laundry list of themes are only a microcosm of this brilliant film, which as mentioned in the beginning, is able to blend all of these motifs with a bizarre climax that normalizes the characters and the point of the movie. It is so difficult to describe this movie, and the mental effort that I put into dissecting the actual story and ending almost makes me forget how great Norton, Pitt, and Helen Bonham Carter's (Pitt's girlfriend in the movie) acting and Fincher's direction is. You will never see this type of movie of again because it is magnificent. Four stars out of four.