Fight Club
Not so much a movie that started a literal revolution in its own right but nonetheless successfully pointed out the still to this day widening cracks in the American male psyche, this 1999 release by director David Fincher scores a bullseye in targeting the âsofteningâ of American men, something started no doubt by the so called âmetrosexualâ phenomenon a few years before, where guys were successfully subliminally convinced that wearing what was at the time considered latent homosexual fashions like flip flops and pink shirts while conducting themselves in a more sensitive, albeit more feminine manner was somehow designated as âcoolâ. This was a movie that railed against that devolution, forming its own super masculine political ideology that combined elements of anarchy, nihilism, and fascism before then pumping it up with steroids and taking it completely over the top, no surprise since the two founders of the movement are essentially insane lunatics. The joke was that for a period of time after the film came out, some young white males tried to adapt the filmâs philosophy as their own, not realizing as both the writers and director stated publicly that the whole thing was intended to be a satire directed at the brainwashing of the public by corporations, the media, and fancy magazines promoting different products and ways of life (as with the metrosexual thing) and what would happen if such things started to be widely rejected by men as they embraced instead a more primal form of thinking to the point that they became an underground revolutionary group. Pretty heavy stuff, and a lot of fun to watch and get into on repeat viewings, especially considering that itâs such a dialogue heavy film, with profound themes and statements in almost every scene. The stars of the film (or co-leads being a more apt term) are Edward Norton as a car company executive with severe insomnia problems tasked with doing recall evaluations on the companyâs vehicles when something goes wrong (witness the heartless way his co-workers joke about how the people in one particular wreck perished, including an infant) whoâs just looking for a way out of his hellish existence so he can have something that can help him sleep at night, and Brad Pitt as the legendary Tyler Durden, a crazed radical type who works primarily as a soap salesman but also moonlights as a waiter (who pisses in the soup) and a movie theater projectionist (who splices in one frame from a porno flick of a dick shot into a family movie) but is really a guy who seems to have it all figured out about what is wrong with the world today and has his own ideas about how to fix it, which he gladly tells Norton upon meeting him. Itâs interesting that Pitt, long considered one of the more soulless, vacuous movie stars of recent years, was able to hang his hat on Durden as being his signature role that heâs best known and most highly regarded for, a swaggering, gritty, badass testosterone machine who was so convincing that many young males in essence wanted to âbeâ him in real life, only to fall flat on their faces due to the fact that real life doesnât have anybody like that walking around due to Durden being an almost purely fictional (i.e. unrealistic) character just like Forrest Gump was. As for Norton, he finds an initial cure for his insomnia by attending group therapy sessions for terminally ill patients (while posing as one) until he runs into the beautiful but very fucked up Marla Singer played by Helena Bonham Carter, and when I say fucked up, itâs because itâs very likely sheâs the most fucked up female character in movie history, and yet anyone whoâs ever dated a mental case type chick in real life might actually find frightening shades of authenticity in Bonham Carterâs performance. After driving Norton from the sessions because she ruined his insomnia cure (though they would meet up later in the movie), he meets Pitt and they decide that the only way to take out their aggression on a society that puts literal peer pressure on them to conform is to fight each other, and then when others start to notice, recruit more and more males of the trapped, disaffected, blue collar âcareerâ variety to start the title club where they take turns beating the shit out of each other every night whilst finding a primal âreleaseâ from the bullshit of the world and âsetting themselves freeâ so to speak. In time, the movement grows and grows to other cities as well, where Durden ultimately brings everything together to launch a series of destructive pranks designed to bring the big corporate symbols of the world down a notch before his ultimate master plan: to blow up all the different headquarters of all the major credit card companies including their databases, thus reducing the whole worldâs debt level to 0. Pretty audacious even in that incomplete synopsis, and in many ways a wonder that this film was even made, then, now, or anytime. The tactic of having Pitt spout much of the Fight Club ideology while having Norton stand off to the side achieves the desired effect, moreso when we get to the movieâs major twist, derided by some but actually managing to work and be effective, with everything in the movie prior successfully backing it up and not making it a cheat in any way. What makes Fight Club work in a brilliant, timeless way (it was immediately relevant upon release and remains so to this day) is that while any viewer is not required to literally take on Durdenâs nutso philosophy, the idea that rejecting all forms of media and conformist thought processing that have seemingly tripled since the film came out in order to find personal and spiritual freedom for oneself in this world is actually incredibly valid and true to many extents, enabling one to go from feeling like a slave to finally feeling alive. In the end, a brilliant act of subversion whose contribution to our cinema culture is one that often goes unheraldedâŚ
10/10