It would be cool to fight William Shatner

FIGHT CLUB (1999)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

(Originally reviewed in 1999)

"Fight Club" is an audacious experiment in filmmaking. It also redefines the term multilayered. It has so many layers that not even a simple miniseries like "Les Miserables" or "The Winds of War" could match the density of this film. "Fight Club" is a unique, neo-noir, fascistic film - undefinable and unquestionably brilliant. I've never seen anything like it.

Edward Norton plays Jack, an insurance-claims investigator leading a lonely life of IKEA furniture and not much else. Jack is constantly on plane trips where he hopes his plane will crash since the life insurance is so much higher on a business trip. One day, he decides to frequent self-help groups, including one for testicular cancer. Of course, Jack has no testicular cancer, but what else can a lonely guy do? Meeting these people, including Bob (Meat Loaf), has given this insomniac an emotional release and an ability to sleep like a baby. Jack's life seems in order until he finds his female counterpart, Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), attending all these meetings (including, hilariously, the cancer group) for the thrill of it. Marla is certainly a pill. She steals clothes from laundromats and fakes suicide calls, and always runs in front of traffic. Marla has reduced Jack back to his former self. He can't sleep again, feeling threatened by this loose, volatile woman.

Eventually, Jack meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a soap salesman who frees Jack from his isolation. Tyler also works at a hotel and occasionally as a projectionist where he splices in a single frame of pornography in children's films. One night, while drinking beers, Tyler suggest a new form of therapy for Jack, who has lost his possessions in an apparent accidental explosion in his apartment. Tyler engages Jack in "fight club," a club where barechested men engage in fistfights without gloves. The club is born as Jack moves into Tyler's nearly decrepit house and learns how to make soap, how to get a chemical burn, how to have sex with Marla - basically, how to be born again from a generation of men raised by women. This fight club engineers a movement all across the country. Even men like Bob (who had too much testosterone and grew breasts) learn to tackle their inner machoistic and masochistic behavior - men are men again without material possessions. They are on the course of self-destruction, as opposed to self-improvement.

Naturally, this club is not just about fighting as it slowly evolves. Tyler's club also includes "Project Mayhem," where businesses like Starbucks and corporate art symbols are destroyed (sometimes, an explosion on the surface of a building resembles a smiley face). What Tyler is forming is a terrorist organization without killing anyone. He is trying to bring out freedom, encouraging his members to pick a fight (one incredibly funny moment involves spraying water on a priest) and be free from the constraints of society. Jack doesn't quite see it that way, or does he?

"Fight Club" is not an average filmgoing experience. The film has its own rhythm, gliding along its own patterns and layers of storytelling. Director David Fincher ("The Game") has utilized distancing devices such as narration (used sparingly here), freeze-frames, subliminal cuts, impossible point-of-view shots (such as Jack's own nerves and nose hairs), and so on. The film is quite subjective, showcasing Jack's wild imagination, which includes icy caverns with sliding penguins, planes crashing into each other, split-second shots of forests, an advertisement for IKEA furniture with their prices superimposed, and much more. "Fight Club" unfolds in such a rapid succession of images and montage editing that it will leave you cinematically punch-drunk.

After one viewing, it is easy to miss some of the satire. In fact, you may not exactly know what it is you have witnessed. "Fight Club" seems more like an extension of a man's place in a consumerist society. But then there is all the mayhem from placing explosives in corporate buildings, credit card companies, and anything with a brand name. But it also buries itself in Jack's head, as in one incredulous moment where he punches himself repeatedly in front of his boss! One can say that "Fight Club" is an anti-consumerist, anti-society, anti-job, pro-male bravado-type film from the point-of-view of an emasculated insomniac. Earlier in 1999, there was Albert Brooks's "The Muse" where Martin Scorsese described making a "Raging Bull" remake with a really thin guy. Edward Norton seems to be the likely candidate in a movie that riffs on "Raging Bull" with blood-soaked glory.

Brad Pitt is about as live wire in this film as he ever gets as Tyler, expounding on Nietzschean philosophies and using bare fists as freedom fists. The question remains: does Tyler really think that his cult group is free if they have to conform to his ways? At one point, he says: "God doesn't like you." It could be that Tyler is just a rambling, egotistical, rabble-rousing Hitler whose own plans outweigh the results. Pitt shows the humor, the irony and the machismo of Tyler - this guy probably just wants some attention.

Edward Norton plays the most complex character of his career, showing Jack's frailty and emasculation flawlessly. He looks like a punching bag, and it is crudely funny how he shows up at his dead-end job with a black eye and a bloody lip. Norton also depicts Jack's recognition that this fight club has become too dangerous. There is a major twist involving his character which shows that Norton, one of the most gifted actors in the last twenty years, can convincingly mimic any facial expression at the turn of a dime.

Helena Bonham Carter, known for costume dramas, plays an unusual, atypical character. Her Marla has a weird hairstyle and a knack for doing anything for kicks, but she is also treated like a sex object by Tyler. The character may not have much juice, but Carter is game for sexual hijinks.

I am still not sure what "Fight Club" is really saying because it is difficult to discern if the film condones or condemns Tyler's neo-Nazi-bordering-on-punk actions. It is hard to say if the ending is optimistic or downbeat. Still, isn't the mystery the result of a great film? Mostly, "Fight Club" is a galvanizing, relentlessly violent, occasionally funny black comedy with satiric overtones. What Fincher has accomplished in this maddening parade is to inform us that society and consumerism have become social ills, preventing the males from being free to let loose and let the chips fall where they may. Oh, yes, and that it would be cool to fight William Shatner.