Well, what do we have here? Roger Ebert calls "Fight Club" the "most frankly and cheerfully fascist movie since 'Death Wish,' a celebration of violence." Another reviewer calls it "a rare film that challenges the viewer to come up with his own interpretations.
And, there you have it. Brad Pitt and Edward Norton star in this satire? no, drama? I guess, comedy? — I'd have to say emphatically, no. Anyhow, over the course of two hours and twenty minutes Edward Norton, the narrator, takes Brad Pitt, into his confidence (or is it the other way around?) and finds more than, perhaps, he bargained for.
Norton meets Pitt, Tyler Durden, on a flight where both wind up being buddies after first testing each other's mettle. Both men are disgusted with and alienated by society's values. We've all heard that one, but they have a novel way of combating their feelings.
Until meeting Durden, Norton had been amusing himself attending all sorts of 12-step meetings, at one point going so far as to attend an all-black support group for sickle-cell anemia. He encounters the movie's third star at one of these meetings, Marla Singer, played by the winsome Helena Bonham Carter, who also is a less than sincere attendee.
The narrator's apartment burns down about this time, and he moves in with Durden where he discovers Durden's secret society, the Fight Club. One never mentions it; one just does it. And what they do is just that – fight. Members meet in dark basements and beat the living daylight out of one another as this is the only way men can find any meaning in life.
Tyler says self-improvement is. . . .well, he says something not very nice. He says self-destruction is more likely the answer.
Carter's Marla Singer, described by Ebert as a "feisty, chain-smoking hellcat," takes a very dim view of Tyler's attitude. She doesn't like being passed over for a broken nose,
Whether the movie is violence for its own sake, or for a deeper meaning is a quandary posed by this difficult film, one of many.
The movie is adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's "acerbic satire," and direct by David Fincher, who also directed Michael Douglas in "The Game."
It is rated R for disturbing and graphic depiction of violent anti-social beharior, sexuality and language.
It starts Thursday at Cinema One.
