April 3, 2010: Fight Club
I’ve mentioned before that 1999 was a great movie year for me. American Beauty, The Matrix, Being John Malkovich, Office Space, The Sixth Sense, Ronin, and the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair all remain particular favourites of mine. We’ll ignore Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace for the purposes of this little love-fest. High up on that list of favourites within a very solid year is Fight Club.
Fight Club had widespread appeal to go hand in hand with widespread repulsion, and this polarizing effect on the audience is almost an extension of the very point that the film is trying to make. The core idea is the rejection of consumerism, embracing life and feeling, and tearing everything down, no matter how raw or painful, in order to rebuild with a new attitude. That message was perhaps a decade ahead of its time, falling on deaf ears in the late 1990s and carrying noticeably more meaning now in the midst of global recession and environmental carnage, forcing us to question the purpose and sustainability of mass consumption and overpopulation. In Fight Club, physical hand-to-hand combat brings people from all walks of life together with a common purpose, puts them on the same level, and puts them in touch with the struggles of others.
The story focuses on a nameless protagonist (played by Edward Norton) who lives a travelling business lifestyle which was quite common at the time, hopping all over the USA all the time to investigate car crashes and determine whether or not automotive recalls are necessary. In the course of his travels, he meets Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), a quirky fellow who seems nevertheless to be somehow on the same wavelength as him. Arriving home one night to find his condo destroyed by a fiery explosion, and with no friends to call since he values his travels and his IKEA possessions more than people, Norton calls Tyler Durden looking for a place to stay. Tyler agrees on the condition that they first try to hit each other to see what it’s like, since he’s never been in a fight, so they fight in the parking lot behind a bar. Inspired by this experience, before long they have started an exclusive “Fight Club” where men can see what it’s like to beat each other up, within the protective cocoon of a secret society with rules for the fights. Our protagonist slowly realizes that Tyler is up to something, building an underground army with their nationwide Fight Club chapters, in order to take a big destructive swipe at consumerism and all that is wrong with society. Oh, and of course they both vie for the affections of the same woman.
I’ve seen this film a number of times, though not at all recently, so I’ve been planning to revisit it and hoping that it would hold up. I found that the movie on the DVD looks physically much older than it is, as if the transfer was bad or it was a particularly low-budget film. I don’t remember noticing that before, but it doesn’t seriously detract from the experience. Despite my being absolutely blown away upon my first viewing, the climax never really rang true for me, and I hoped this time around it would make more sense or rankle less with age, but unfortunately it hasn’t. Fight Club remains brilliant for the first 1/3 of its run time, and still great up to the last 15-20 minutes, but it falls just short of being a masterpiece because of the ending.
I’m not sure whether it’s appropriate to reveal the twist, and I think I need to err on the side of caution here, but there must be some statute of limitations on that kind of thing. Everyone knows the truth about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (revealed in 1980), and I like to think that everyone knows the secret in The Sixth Sense (revealed in 1999, the same year as Fight Club). But it seems to me that there are probably still plenty of people who haven’t yet seen Fight Club but still might, so I don’t want it on my head if I wreck it for them. Like any good twist, it’s right there in front of your eyes all along if you’re paying attention.
But let’s turn away from the overarching story for a moment and look at the fighting itself. I’ve never personally been in a real fight – never punched anyone, never been punched. Like many guys (and women as well, though the film stays away from exploring that angle), I suppose, I wonder what it’s like and kind of sort of almost wish I could find out, but don’t want to suffer the pain and possible permanent damage. I think Fight Club totally speaks to guys like me, and that’s entirely deliberate. But it’s more than that, more than just the physical combat. In a half in-jest attempt to convince my wife to sit and watch the film with me (she’d seen it before so I knew I couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes), I explained to her that really, the violence is allegorical, and the allegory just happens to be expressed with actual violence. And I do think that what these men find in fight club is more than just an outlet for physical aggression, but also a way to connect to other humans on a visceral level.
Where this fits into the career arc for director David Fincher is also fascinating, and I tend to think of it as being his early peak, possibly to be revisited. As a director of music videos and later the troubled sequel Alien3 (1992), Fincher then stunned me with the combination of Se7en (1995) and Fight Club (1999). Scattered in that period were also the underappreciated The Game (1997) and Panic Room (2002). He then shifted his tone somewhat, and turned out what many consider his best film, Zodiac (2007), and the tragically muddled The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Some directors (William Friedkin, anyone? Michael Cimino?) have an early peak and then never regain their glory. The ambition clearly evident in both Fincher’s early and later works leave me with high hopes that he’ll eventually find the right combination and win Oscar gold. He’s certainly one of the most dynamic and inventive directors currently working in Hollywood.
1999 was a tough year. Fight Club isn’t really awards material, but I think it touched a lot of people in a way they didn’t even fully understand at the time, and it remains once of my favourites, despite an ending linked to a premise which doesn’t make sense to me. But there’s so much more to experience and to think about in this film that some weakness in the overall story doesn’t bring it down.
The definition of a modern-day classic.
Post a Comment