Review: Fight Club
(Originally review in 2011)
I’m throwing a SPOILER WARNING up but I think we all already know the twist.
Fight Club is a film that requires two viewings, the first to get the full story, the second to see all the things you missed on the first viewings. This is my third viewing. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
The film starts with two men in an abandoned building, one on a chair, the other holding a gun. They talk about the end of the beginning and a future Ground Zero – worth a mention as this was made two years before 9/11 – and from there we flash back to how they got there. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
The movie follows Edward Norton as ‘The Narrator’, his name is never revealed but for the purposes of this review I’ll call him Jack. Jack is an enigma, everything about him is a mystery, his name, his childhood, his place of work. The only thing we know is that he’s a corporate drone and an insomniac. In the beginning, Jack has become a slave to the IKEA masses, thinking that he needs his possessions to mirror his life, as a result he’s become disconnected from the world. Following the advice of a doctor he goes to see a testicular cancer group and there he finds his release, his freedom. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
Jack is a wholly unlikable character, he frequents these support groups, playing off their sympathies and their diseases. He feels that because he is the only healthy one in a group of people dying he is better than them and it’s that feeling that allows him to sleep at night. Of course that is ruined when he meets Marla Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter. Marla is a women that doesn’t fear death, she goes to the support groups for fun, she stands in the middle of a busy road without fear and swallows medical pills in an attempt to commit suicide just for kicks. In short she is everything Jack is not and he resents her for that, because of her arrival he is forced to see his own pitiful reasons for joining the support groups and it’s back to the insomnia. Even though they manage to sort the support groups out between them it’s ruined for Jack and he becomes even more distant and disillusioned. And this is how we come to meet... [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
Tyler Durden. There a homo-erotic undertone throughout the movie – at one point Jack’s narration says ‘I am Jack’s broken heart’ when he thinks Tyler has abandoned him for his army – however these feelings aren’t sexualised or even romanticised, there are simply Jack’s admiration for what Tyler is to the world. He’s the most anti-establishment men to appear on screen, he doesn’t give a fuck what people say or think of him, his wardrobe is completely out there – red leather jacket, mesh vest and massive pink sunglasses are just some of his cloth choices. He owns no possessions, his house isn’t even his, he squats in a rundown old place where nothing works and the power has to be cut every time it rains, he makes soap out of human fat and makes bombs out of soap, he works three jobs, he ruins your food and he splices porn into your family films. He is the exact opposite of Jack’s corporate drone. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
When Jack loses everything he turns to Tyler who agrees to let Jack live with him and in return all Jack has to do is fight him. The fight awakens something primal in Jack, something that was hidden underneath his ying-yang table and imperfect glass bowls. He begins to feel like a man again. Slowly but surely, Jack and Tyler get more business zombies interested in their little group, allowing themselves to vent all their frustrations with their pathetic little lives out on each other, the adrenaline rush of beating the shit out of each other and getting the shit beat out of themselves. It becomes an addiction to them, they feel nothing and they own nothing. Under Tyler’s guidance the ‘Space Monkeys’ are taught to ignore the past and ignore the future and accept that they are in the present and that nothing they do means anything, it’s an incredibly cynical view of the world but it works, with nothing gained nothing is lost and a man with nothing to lose is the dangerous thing on the planet. Ironically of course all Tyler is doing is breaking them down and rebuilding them to his ideals, instead of drones for their companies they become drones against their companies. Tyler starts to build a cult and succeeds on a massive, continent wide scale. Soon Tyler’s teachings of self-destruction become teachings of anarchy, and from there teachings of mayhem. Once Jack realises the destructive plans of Tyler’s he sets off to stop him.
And then he finds out the truth, that Tyler isn’t real, he is only a personality of Jack’s gone awry.
What Fincher does brilliantly here is that in the beginning he shows Jack’s mental state clearly through his imaginations of ice caves and childish penguins. However as the film goes on Jack’s mental state becomes less and less obvious until the lines between him and Tyler are blurred. His insomnia exacerbates this to the point where he can’t even remember visiting places around America just a week earlier. This allows Tyler’s influences to spread rapidly. [if !supportLineBreakNewLine] [endif]
Everything about this film is brilliant, from the loss of masculinity in the upper-middle class world, the dream of a return to the animalistic days of our ancestors and the critical commentary on consumer society – quite significant in our bankrupt economy today – to the fantastical cynical humour – Jack beating himself up in his boss' office, the ripping of the fat bag, Jack escaping the police with his trousers missing – and the amazing use of The Pixies ‘Where Is My Mind?’ in the ending, when the explosions start and the guitars burst out you know that this has been a hell-of-a-journey.
10/10
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