K-SCORE: 90
Director: David Fincher
Screenplay: Jim Uhls
Based on: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf Aday
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“how many pairs of my underwear have another man’s name on them”
Fight Club was the film to like for cool intellectual high-schoolers back in 1999 and stayed at the top of everyone’s favorite film list until Memento came out at which point it was cooler to like Memento for a while. I think for some reason this great movie has faded with time, either because people have forgotten its core ideas, or because its twist is one that everyone knows by now. Or maybe just randomly people stopped paying attention to it. Well, I’m here to tell you that Fight Club is back, people. Take another look. Sure you know the truth behind Tyler Durden, but I bet you didn’t remember that at one point he says, “We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m beginning to wonder if another woman is what we need.” It’s not just the fact that he calls out obsessive consumerism, meaningless office jobs, absurd regulations, and societal norms that all come at the cost of individuality, but it’s the way that he does it. I rewatched Fight Club as a person who has at times described himself as a rational anarchist. I’ve routinely mocked celebrity magazines, and I’m the first one to claim that the five-hundred channels we get on our TV don’t contain more than thirty minutes of quality programming a week. Yet I still listened to Tyler jab at the narrator and wondered how many pairs of my underwear have another man’s name on them. Fight Club has a furious tone that’s invigorating, thought-provoking, and entertaining. I’m not one for blowing up buildings to erase digital debt, but I was ready to dive into the deep end of this credo all the same. I want more. I’d like to see Fight Club break free again.
THE SCOTT 200
As a cool, intellectual high schooler back in 1999, I liked Fight Club. If I then put on my mid-2000’s college hat, I’d say something like “But Durden misappropriates his distaste for Societal Constructs, with a distaste for the rule of law and in so doing actually reinforces the very cultural norms he is looking to protest.” Then I’d ramble on for 3,000 more words. Now I’m back to liking Fight Club, but mainly because I like Cornflower Blue, and I like to wonder what my spirit animal is … probably a Beluga Whale. I give Fight Club 18 out of 20 SoapBubs. I give Kyle’s review 4 out of 5.
“even if Fight Club had half the well-shot scenes and ten times the number of story flaws, I’d still like watching it so that I could listen to Tyler rant”
The film has an internal consistency that’s more and more evident with every viewing. You see clues. You see that the form matches the content. You catch little details that are satisfying. And still you’re entertained by the vandalism, by the liposuction soap, by the homemade napalm, by the chemical burning, by the gritty street fights, by project mayhem, by the support groups’ grief counselling sessions, by Tyler and his rants. Yeah, alright it’s not perfect. At the end of the day, a bullet still somehow does some magical head passing through that I can’t logically justify even given the narrator’s paranoid schizophrenic delusions. Also, Edward Norton’s character should become more and more physically debilitated as a result of his insomnia. And how does Marla not spoil everything just by letting a name slip in the normal flow of conversation? But even if Fight Club had half the well-shot scenes and ten times the number of story flaws, I’d still like watching it so that I could listen to Tyler rant.
“ The conflicts I face in my life are not ones of existence but of relevance.”
Side bar: I want to write a spiritual successor that focuses on overly petty conflicts. The number of times a day where I hear of a problem somebody in my life is dealing with and I think, “That’s… that’s… that’s not real!” The dress code says this girl’s shorts are too short. I saw a kid walking his dog at the edge of my property and I didn’t know him. Walmart won’t let me return my vegetable juicer. My bartender put his finger over the lip of my glass when he was shaking my margarita. I think my boss is insensitive to my gray-scaled gender-identity. I had to come to work thirty minutes early because Jennifer didn’t turn in her W2 on time. I cracked the screen on my iphone and I’m not eligible for an upgrade for another six months. Then I see people ignoring the conflicts that are real, as if modern life is all one big distracting bright light for you to stare at as you slowly fade away. I frequently find people who don’t get along with their children, who are deep in credit card debt, student loan debt, or have mortgages they can’t pay off, people who’ve become so overweight their knees are cracking beneath them and they get winded going up a set of stairs. These problems persist for years, sometimes decades, and often don’t get solved so much as supplanted by a new generation and a new set. That’s where my fight club would come in. Take the cushions away; make people face things.
I don’t want to get into a fight exactly, but at the same time, I get it. Haven’t you ever fantasized about the civilization being completely destroyed and you somehow being left to wander through the wreckage? Of course. Then you’d know what you’re really like, what you’re really made of. Survival has become so easy that less than 1% of the people take care of essentially 100% of the people’s basic needs. Our populations are enormous. It makes me, at least, feel lost in the crowd, another of God’s unwanted children. Even the things that I’ve done that are difficult mean less than they would have had I done them fifty years ago. There are enough people to have written novels, enough to have graduated from college, enough to have started a website. The conflicts I face in my life are not ones of existence but of relevance. So maybe that’s why Fight Club spurs the anarchist in me to rear it’s head and say enough. A fight is so black and white, such an obvious test of physical limitations in a world that never wants you to be physically tested. I think that’s what the fight clubs in Fight Club are about. All our conflicts are emotional ones. Throwing an artificial physical one in there helps put those emotional ones in perspective.
I go back and forth about whether or not what Tyler Durden does to people in the film is mean-spirited. That’s rare for me, to not know exactly how I feel about the ethics of a thing. Theft is wrong, vandalism selfish in its own way, pranks often cruel, but at the same time how many people really do need the brand of punishment Tyler is dishing out. Even if you’re not ready to introduce a little mayhem into your life, it’s healthy to think about what such chaos would do, what would stay important and what would quickly become meaningless. It’s an interesting movie, still enjoyable after over fifteen years, and as relevant as it ever was.