STARRING: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf DIRECTOR: David Fincher WRITTEN BY: Jim Uhls (based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk)
Not since Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers has there been a movie this incendiary, and not since David Cronenberg has a so-called mainstream director been this willing to repeatedly tiptoe the fine line between pointed social commentary and outright social irresponsibility. While Fincher's films have never suffered from a lack of shock value (his major character killings in both Alien 3 and Seven are fine examples), Fight Club marks the distillation of his pitch-black comedic sensibility (see 1997's The Game) into something like a definitive statement.
Jack (Norton, acting as both narrator and protagonist) is your typical cubicle clone, whose disillusionment is amplified by a seemingly incurable insomnia. On the offhand advice of a doctor, he sits in on group-therapy sessions for everything from blood parasites to testicular cancer. Here he meets Bob (Marvin Lee Aday, AKA Meat Loaf), a cancer-emasculated eunuch with profound gynecomastia. Strangely, the release he finds while sobbing on Bob's breasts allows him to sleep at night, at least until a fellow group-therapy "tourist" named Marla Singer (Carter) comes along to ruin things for him, forcing a grudging compromise that recalls Monty Python in its dark hilarity. Later, he meets Tyler Durden (Pitt), a soap salesman with a decidedly subversive outlook on life. One night, after his IKEA- furnished condo explodes (don't ask-- you'll just have to see the movie, awright?), he is goaded by Tyler into a fight, and damned if it doesn't feel good. It is pure, raw existence, a brief moment of clarity and purpose that makes his dreary workaday life pale in comparison. He moves into Tyler's squalid abandoned mansion, and they form the titular organization, an underground therapy group where men bond with bare-knuckle savagery and very few rules, the first two of which are "Don't Talk About Fight Club." Armed with charisma and an attractive anti-corporate philosophy, Tyler assumes leadership of the burgeoning membership of white-collar slaves and dead-end McEmployees. Resentment creeps into Jack's heart, made worse by the fact that Tyler is also regularly and noisily boffing the hated Marla. Funded by a frivolous lawsuit, Tyler begins molding his devotees into an army dedicated to mischief and mayhem. Their initially juvenile pranks (like pissing in food and putting spike belts on roads) quickly evolve into something more like sedition, and Jack fears that things have gone sour.
It is after this point, when you are plenty uncomfortable and wondering just how far Fincher will go to say something original, that the film uncorks a disappointing plot twist. It is so contrived-- and so conventional compared to what precedes it-- that everything which follows (including the ending) becomes far less interesting. It's a major (though not fatal) flaw, and for a director as notoriously unpredictable as Fincher, it feels like a cop-out.
Fight Club is going to be misconstrued by a great many people. In the early going, it has a downright dangerous feel; it seems to be saying that violence and civil disobedience are good for the soul, and this is undoubtedly the message that a few moronic punks are going to take from it. I'll be mightily surprised if imitation Fight Clubs don't spring up here and there, and I'll be even more amazed if Fincher isn't vilified for it by the same humorless witch-hunters that are currently after Oliver Stone. They needn't bother, because Fight Club is less a message movie than Fincher's elaborate attempt at a joke. Tyler Durden, for all his Dionysian allure, is really nothing more than the logical (and far less hypocritical) extrapolation of all those self-help gurus who constantly show up on Oprah to preach their me-first gospel of self-actualization. In this context, the joke works, but like the latest Columbine joke, some people will get it and enjoy a good laugh, and others won't. Hopefully, though, their silly moral outrage won't spoil the joke for the rest of us.
GRADE: B+
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