words “You’ve never seen Fight Club” as if it were the holy grail or the cure for cancer and so by process of elimination I am the single last human being on the planet, that has never seen Fight Club… until now!So, with this being the first review on this blog I chose a film that I thought, based on popular opinion, I couldn’t help but like. And I wanted to like it… I really really did…
Fight Club focuses on three characters, The Narrator, Edward Norton, Tyler Durden, Brad Pitt and Marla Singer, Helena Bonham Carter. The film follows Edward Norton’s character through a series of unconnected events. He goes to the doctors because he’s not sleeping. He starts to visit therapy groups so that he can remember how to cry. He meets a like-minded, angry young girl called Marla and falls for her, although he doesn’t admit it. He goes on a business trip and meets Tyler Durden on the plane. He gets back to find his condo has been blown up. He moves in with Tyler; into a dilapidated building where Tyler makes soap from human fat and sells it to large hotels and department stores. And through all of this the film fails to find a direction, it just flounders from one mundane experience to the next, each a little stranger, each a little more depraved and each a little more pretentious.
I sat there watching the film, knowing I was going to write about it and all I could think was that we are following the wrong character. The character with the plan, the one that sets up the Fight Clubs, the one that will eventually attempt to destroy half the city is not Norton’s character. Tyler Durden should have been the focus, I thought. If the film had focused on Pitt’s character we would have had structure, rather than the aimless, floundering hour and half, where Norton is dragged this way and that, unable to stabilise the story in any way. I couldn’t understand why this wishy-washy nonsense was the Mona Lisa of the Film World.
Not only was the film directionless, but it was self-servingly pretentious. It thought of itself as more than it was, as more than its subject matter deserved. It dared to pose questions about the meaning of life and suggested that that meaning could be found in the Fight Clubs and glorious ideas like Project Mayhem. I had lasted to 1:34 exactly and I just couldn’t take any more so I turned it off and left it a couple of days.
Tonight, I turned it back on. Norton and Pitt are in a limousine, driving out of control down the highway and Tyler asks everyone in the car, if they were to die, what did they wish they had done. Norton can think of nothing. He fights Tyler for control of the car and eventually he gives up and accepts his fate.
After the crash the true point of the story begins to unravel and I finally understand why we haven’t been following Tyler Durden’s character. I finally understand why we saw the doctors appointment, the therapy groups sessions, the formation of the Fight Clubs and as the audience begins to understand so too does Norton’s character.
The last forty five minutes of the film are infinitely better than the first hour and half, it is gripping as you realise the truth that Norton is Tyler, that his sleep deprivation has brought out in him a monster, a revolutionary. Realising the truth Norton runs to the police, but they are part of his army of revolutionaries and they do nothing to help him. Finally Norton tries to defuse the bombs himself, but Tyler stops him and at last we return to the first scene of the film. Tyler has a gun in Norton’s mouth and he asks “Would you like to say a few words?” Norton replies “I still can’t think of anything.”
After that Norton shoots himself, he tells Tyler “My eyes are open” the bullet passes through his cheek and he lives, however Tyler collapses, the back of his head blown clean off. This is Norton’s final admission that he no longer needs Tyler Durden. Marla is brought in and she and Norton watch the destruction of the American economy, the two are alone, holding hands.
The last third of the film is something completely different and in my opinion it doesn’t excuse the first part, but it does explain it and you find yourself wanting to see it again, to see the clues you missed. Fight Club then is a clever film and despite my opposition to it I found myself liking it more because of that. The pretentious nature of the first part is earned by the intelligent way that the film eventually plays out. The fact that the film feels directionless, aimed in the wrong direction is resolved by the revelation that the two characters are one, that Tyler’s story is hidden so that the twist, when it comes, is that more potent.
Well, that’s been My Two Cents… Tune in next time for my take on the Italian Job.
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