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Fight Club
David Fincher's new subversive comedy Fight Club is one of those movies that most conservative filmgoers will avoid because they're afraid of it. And if they see it, the intensity of the violence, the meaningless and manipulative use of sex by the characters, and the nihilistic speeches of the Fight Club's cult leader will probably provoke an angry backlash. All manner of society's ills in the future will be blamed on this movie. It's happened before. Remember Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. Because of the ideas presented there, many believe the nation is going to hell in a handbasket. But I call Fight Club a subversive comedy for a reason. It sets out to subvert the ideas it presents, not to preach them. If audiences are educated enough to detect irony, to know satire when they see it, they will see Fight Club for what it is. Fight Club is about what happens when people respond against a dehumanizing culture by reacting violently. Ultimately, they create their own dehumanizing culture, and anything meaningful they might be fighting for is only further trampled in the experience. Our protagonist is Jack, a man who finds himself torn in two. One half of him is inspired by a rebellious man named Tyler Durden who wants to respond to society's ills with a violent wake-up call. The other half of him wants to find another way. While I don't think David Fincher (or Chuck Palahniuk, the novelist who wrote Fight Club) goes far to show us the True Answer to society's ills, he does a powerful job of exploring the Wrong Answer and showing it for the lie that it is. Isn't rebelling against materialism and hypocrisy a good thing? Not if the only way to do so is to leave chaos and destruction in your wake. There are a lot of similarities between Fight Club and Sam Mendes's acclaimed new film American Beauty. They're both about a man who, fed up with American Culture at the end of the millennium, decides to rebel at all costs, no matter what anyone thinks. Both characters are sick of the corporate, shirt-and-tie rat race. Both are fed up with materialism (which Fight Club calls "the IKEA nesting instinct"). Both hate the hypocrisy of those who sell the American dream. And so both try to quit caring what other people think of them, to follow their own dreams at any cost. Fight Club is smarter and wiser than Beauty, though. Our narrator Jack lets the audience in on his aching conscience throughout the movie. He can see the monster he is becoming. As much as he admires the rebellion led by the ultimate tough-guy Tyler (Brad Pitt), he sees that while he's escaping materialism, he's also losing his only hope for a meaningful relationship or life. Edward Norton plays Jack perfectly. In search of that meaning as well as an emotional outlet, he discovers a new nightlife visiting all manner of late-night support groups. He embraces cancer victims, for example, and weeps even though he isn't dying of cancer. In those circles, people take him seriously because they believe he's dying. And he finds people willing to speak their minds. It works for him. He feels better. For a while. Then another "faker" shows up, a spaced-out chain-smoking girl named Marla (Helena Bonham Carter, looking like she just finished auditioning for Blade Runner 2) Forced to face his own hypocrisy, Jack decides he needs a different outlet. Along comes Tyler Durden, perhaps one of Hollywood's most iconic rebels. Tyler introduces Jack to another sort of support group... Fight Club. Fight Club, Tyler says, is the beginning of recovery for men who were never taught to become men because they never had committed fathers. "I don't think another woman is the answer," he scoffs. At Fight Club, men duke it out to unleash their anger and frustration, until they lie panting and deliriously happy, bathed in their own blood. The pain wakes them up from their catatonic lives. Jack finds this to be a great release, only half-listening to Tyler's philosophical reasons for starting the group. Tyler's philosophy, however awkward and preachy, is an appealing lie to the youth of America, because there is a lot of truth to it. We are a generation of children without fathers. Because a person's concept of God often has a lot to do with his or her relationship with parents, he or she easily concludes that God is hateful and has abandoned His children. So, instead of going quietly, acquiescing to the "program" of the corporate ladder, these overgrown boys become rebels, nihilists, spitting in God's face, because they want to be noticed. They want to get Daddy's attention. And who cares if they have to lash out at Him to do it? Now, what the typical fundamentalist critic will miss is that this is the message of Tyler Durden, but not the movie. Jack is our anchor. He is our conscience. And he questions Tyler all along, even though he goes along with it. Even as Jack enjoys rebelling and breaking free, he can see that Fight Club is headed in the wrong direction. This unleashed anger is going to rise until it's out of control, until people start getting killed. The rest of the film is about Jack's relationship with Tyler Durden and how, by accepting Tyler's challenge to live outside the law, he is going to lose everything that he holds dear. When Marla finds out about Tyler and a love triangle develops, it's only a matter of time before Tyler and Jack will find themselves at odds. And THAT'S when Fight Club gets really interesting. ('Tis the season for wild surprise endings. Blame it on Keyser Soze.) Ironically, Tyler's club, which evolves into a violent and muscular militia, begins adhering to rules even stricter and more dehumanizing than the culture outside. I couldn't help but think of Ephesians 4 and the verses about how the corrupt culture "having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality, for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness." In Ephesians, the answer is not in "anger, clamor, wrath, and slander," but in being "kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has also forgiven you." Jack finds out the hard way that by following Tyler's plan, there is no room for any sort of kindness or friendship, even among "friends." When you sacrifice order and meaning, you sacrifice all the good things you so desperately need. Fight Club is a political cartoon of a movie. The biggest surprise to me was how funny it is... big laughs every few minutes, thanks to the chemistry of Pitt and Norton, and the over-the-top spectacle of Helena Bonham Carter. Brad Pitt gives his very best performance, a fusion of his wisecracking freak from 12 Monkeys and his cocky kid from A River Runs Through It. He's all over the screen. He's the energy that makes this two-and-a-half hours so viscerally engaging. Edward Norton balances him out perfectly, with just enough sense so the audience can think about things, yet never becoming preachy. Norton's narration may be the most effective narration I've ever encountered in a film. And while this is one of those films like GoodFellas that points so clearly to the problems of depending on power and anger to achieve one's ends, don't expect a clear view of the way out. It's there, as Jack realizes he must reach for the only shred of a meaningful relationship that he has; but in the sound and fury of the film's rather bewildering finale, the audience might miss it. The movie seems to end up saying that even if we do recover our wits in time and reach for love instead of rebellion, it's already too late... we've ruined the world. While this is a bit disappointing and I would have liked to see the film point more clearly in the right direction, I came away astonished at how the film affected me. I wanted to sit and discuss it for hours with others from the audience, and I felt I had been given new insight into the illnesses of my own generation. Audiences will almost certainly be excited about this movie for the wrong reasons. Tyler's lie will be attractive to some, and we'll probably see some terrorist act or some crime subculture pop up only to discover a copy of a Fight Club video in their closet. And the question I can't quite wrestle to the ground is this: Is it worth it, to put a movie like this out there, knowing somebody's going to take it the wrong way? Like Jesus said, "Those who have eyes to see, let them see. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear." Jeffrey Overstreet 10/21/99
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