Review: Fight Club
Based upon the novel by Chuck Palahniuk.
Starring Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and
Helena Bonham Carter.
Directed by David Fincher.
“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.�
“Action is the adolescent antidepressant.�
If a bunch of guys getting together to beat each other up is so therapeutic, then Mike Tyson should be the most well adjusted fellow on the planet. That he so palpably isn’t exposes the central flaw of both this movie and the silly and pretentious book it’s based on. Namely, it’s idiotic.
I wonder that a smart and talented actor of Edward Norton’s caliber would have anything to do with this foolish film. Raised in affluence and Yale educated, it’s as if he’s ashamed of his civilized roots; “Fight Club� is the third testosterone-soaked movie in a row that he’s done. “Rounders� was about how guys don’t let their buds down, as Matt Damon abandons school, girlfriend, and Gamblers Anonymous to help a cheat named Worm. In the fine “American History X,� Norton got pumped, tattooed, and crazy as a California neo-Nazi. Women, to the extent they appear at all in these three movies, are there to get boinked, dumped, or in the case of “AHX�, to have pot roast shoved down their throats when they mouth off. I think it’s time Norton made a romantic comedy.
In “Fight Club,� Norton’s (nameless) character has a lousy
corporate job and chronic insomnia. For the latter, he joins
support groups for diseases he doesn’t have: various cancers,
blood parasites, etc. These sessions all end in group hugs and a
good cry, and after a good cry he can sleep. At one of these
groups he meets Bob, an obese former weight lifter. The
steroids Bob took to compete gave him testicular cancer, and
now, ball-less, he’s developing “bitch tits.� This feminizing of
Bob is all very symbolic; it’s also very crude and heavy
handed. And, incredibly, it’s supposed to be
Support group emotional vampirism doesn’t fix Norton’s insomnia for long, however. It’s all ruined when a woman shows up and crowds him out (Helena Bonham Carter, here looking like a grown-up version of Wednesday Addams.) He stops going to these church-basement hug fests. What kind of existence is it for men, anyway, getting all warm and fuzzy and crying on each other’s necks. Real men don’t need therapy. They need a good fist fight instead.
Real men are strong and silent. Especially silent. The first rule of fight club is you don’t talk about fight club. The second rule, ditto. Real men go silently about the business of beating each other bloody with bare knuckles and when they’re through, they nod solemnly and shake hands in their new found brotherhood.
Oh, brother. Actually, most fights I’ve seen consist of lots of yelling, swearing, and threatening, and little or no hitting. Hitting hurts. And it usually ends in anything but happy feelings all around.
“Fight Club� is silly male wish fulfillment. If you like WWF Wrestling, you’ll love “Fight Club.�
It gets even sillier when the Space Monkey urban guerrillas show up, with their boot camp “More P.E., drill sergeant!� nonsense. Real men, you see, crave discipline.
Yes, I know “Fight Club� isn’t meant to be taken too literally. Like “The Blair Witch Project� and the aforementioned pro wrestling, it’s all kinda a big joke. It’s part of the Gen X sensibility (Norton has said he prefers the label “the whatever generation�) to make statements they don’t really believe. How that differs from simple irresponsibility is beyond my ken. But I do know that seeing a tall, Aryan Brad Pitt putting a pistol to the head of a young, cowering Asian convenience store clerk, terrorizing him supposedly for his own good, is a very disturbing image. One that’s eerily reminiscent of Norton’s “American History X,� only with the sympathy laid on the wrong side.
Ed, you need a dope-slap.
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