"The First Rule of fight club: you do not talk about fight club.
The second rule of fight club: you DO NOT talk about fight club."
Name: Fight Club
Date: 1999
Writer & Director: directed by David Fincher Screenplay by Jim Uhls
Starring: Edward Norton, Helena Boham carter, Brad Pitt
DT's Rating 9.5/10
"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s**t we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "
Review
Fight Club has to be one of the best films I've seen in a long time. It's widely regarded as a classic (or at least a cult classic), but I never got around to actually watching it before.
For me, the writing is what primarily draws me to a good film - the style and the writing skill and the characters. You get it with films like 'Pulp Fiction' and 'The Green Mile', where you lap it up and bathe in it as it navigates complex issues, dark humor and human nature.
Fight club is definitely one of those films. It's pessimistic but eloquent, funny, has a brilliant way with words, visually lush (though somewhat dystopian) and is full of twists and surprises and alleyways of unusual interest that you're never bored. What's more, the characters are unusual and brilliantly realised, and the cinematography is clever and impressive.
'The Narrator' is an insomniac office worker, somewhat obsessed with catalogues and getting his life built up 'just so' as if it's a collection. he's detached and depressed, drifting through life. After advice form his Doctor to go to a testicular cancer group meeting (instead of being given pills to cure his insomnia), to see what 'real suffering' is like, he soon becomes obsessed with living a lie - drifting between support groups, addicted to the suffering, because in realising there's nothing in life he can sleep.
there he meets an odd disjointed woman named Marla who appears to be similarily addicted to tehse suffering sessions, and his insomnia creeps up aagin as he can no longer get realse.
Later, while travelling in a plane for work, he meets Tyler, an odd and charismatic soap salesmen. After his apartment is blown up out of the blue, he calls in Tyler to have somewhere to sleep and the two start a friendship. Tyler's anarchic, optimistically-bleak outlook in life changes the Narrator;s life, and as the two live together they start up a 'fight club' - as in fighting they only feel alive.
When Tyler starts a sexual relationship with Marla, and as the fight club expands, things very very quickly get complicated. When the club becomes a vandalism-based semi-terrorist attack on corporate life, the Narrator feels pushed out by Tyler's plans. When he demands more involvement and a member of the fight club dies as a result, Tyler disappears and he is forced to chase after him all over the country and he quickly descends the proverbial rabbit-hole to a revelation that will shake the very foundations of his life....
You're probably not very up on pop culture if you don't know what the twist to this classic film is, but if you don't then you'll love it - it'll be excellent as a surprise. If you do, you should still enjoy it all the way through, because it's brilliantly expressed and realised, plus you have the added fun of spotting the easter eggs and hints throughout the whole film.
In short a truly excellent film everyone should watch at least twice.
9.5/10
And finally one last quote:
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
