Norton’s protagonist, suffering from insomnia because
of unhappiness over his materialist lifestyle (Matt Noller said in his review, “his
apartment is presented in the style of an IKEA catalogue, one of Fincher’s
earliest and most effective bits of artful digital trickery”), starts the film
by finding comfort through support groups for disorders he doesn’t have. Noller
mentioned, “Attending groups for testicular cancer patients, alcoholics, and
survivors of incest allows Norton to have people really listen to him rather
than just “wait for their turn to talk.” It’s his escape from his soul-crushing
corporate job (a risk calculator for a major automobile manufacturer), but it’s
a false one because it’s a lie.” He finds a more apparently real escape in
Durden, whom he meets on an airplane and goes to live with after his apartment
burns down.
Noller said, “Norton’s character and the tackily
dressed Durden, who attacks mainstream values by splicing porn footage into
children’s films and selling women’s liposuction fat back to them in boutique
soaps, form the underground “Fight Club,” where men go to beat the shit out of
each other. It’s a total boy’s club, which explains why Fight Club has so
appealed to a certain strand of hyper-masculine men who don’t understand that
Fincher, Palahniuk, and screenwriter Jim Uhls are making fun of them.” “Fight Club”
never hides the fact that the club and its terrorist branch, Project Mayhem,
are just more false support groups, nor does it steer away from the fact that
its members are mindless, whining idiots. Noller described, “Though the film’s
big plot twist doesn’t make much narrative sense, it does make explicit that
Durden is just a literal manifestation of a ridiculous male fantasy—a fantasy
every bit as manufactured as the desire for a big-screen TV or yin-yang-shaped
coffee table. (Much of the brilliance of Pitt’s performance is in how he turns
his absurdly chiseled physique into a wild, scary joke.)” Fight Club is not the
answer.
So, what is? Well for starters, love, though of a
particularly disturbed type. If “Fight Club” has a heart (Noller said, “and I
think it just might”), it’s in the relationship between Norton and Marla
Singer, played by Helena Bonham Carter, a fellow support-group liar who falls
in with Durden. Noller described, “The girl is all kinds of damaged, but
there’s a sick sweetness to her hate-fuck romance with Norton, something sort
of nasty and real among all of contemporary life’s distancing messages and
mediation. If Fight Club falters somewhat by diagnosing a problem while
dismissing all the solutions, there’s nonetheless a warped but very real sense
of hope in its final image of a boy and girl holding hands while the world
collapses around them.” “Fight Club” is funny, scary, messy, and imperfect, and
there’s a reason it continues to tolerate. It met us at a very strange time in
the decade.
I think it goes without saying that this is a movie
that has to be seen to be believed. Psychology students could have a field day
with this film. I think people might know the twist, but if not, I’m not going
to spoil it. Everyone knows the famous quote from this movie, “The first rule
of fight club is you do not talk about fight club.” I had a friend when I
attended Community College that was obsessed with this movie. Probably because
it was his favorite, which I can understand. Like I had already said, this is
one of those mind-boggling films that you should see because you will enjoy it.
Thank you for joining in on “Brad Pitt Month.” Look
out next month to see what I will review next.
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