FIGHT CLUB (1999)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: David Fincher

SCREENWRITER: Jim Uhls

FILM STARS: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf, Jared Leto, Holt McCallany, Zach Grenier, Eion Bailey, Peter Iacangelo, Thom Gossom Jr.

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Chuck Palahniuk

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Vintage

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1997

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1996

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Drama

WORDS: A lot of people love this film and I enjoyed it though only up to a point and with reservations. The world of the fight club (as established by the narrator) is a place where men can come together and fight, bare knuckle as a way of dealing with the modern world, releasing tension , exorcizing demons, as therapy or for any other reason.

Though there has to be a better way with dealing with the modern world the first half of the film is mildly intriguing, (spoilers ahead) but it dragged on and then when the big reveal came, and the characters of Brad Pitt and Edward Norton were one in the same, I was annoyed. I get it, the character has two personalities but why get two actors to play both sides unless you are just messing with the audience … just pissing around with our time. Well, that’s the way I look at it. At that point it may as well have been a fantasy and I lost interest of the narrative. To be fair the book does the same (apparently).

What was left to like, for me, were the performances of Pitt and Norton and the direction of David Fincher.

Fincher likes the controversial, and his films are well made though they tend to be a little solemn and one note. He tackles his material with a style that is in your face, though it is also quite clean. There are no ragged edges emotionally. It’s as if he thumps you repeatedly but then tends to your wounds. His films are at times visceral but they are very slick and controlled, a bit like watching Hitchcock, but without the suspense (or fun). It sounds like I don’t like his films, but I do. They are all watchable and when really good like Seven (1995), Panic Room (2002), Zodiac (2007), Gone Girl (2014) you can watch them again.

Edward Norton is always solid and could have played either character. He plays the whiny, the smug, the smart, the emotionally secure very well (and often) but he can play toughs like in American History X (1998) and the lonely, in the much underrated Down in the Valley (2005). Here he is is in his Dustin Hoffman mode, serious but vulnerable. Brad Pitt is a movie star who can act when he wants to. Here, he is not required to act but to just look cool and fight. He does it well, though not acting can lead to overacting. Pitt is convincing and comes off as a cross between a more talkative Steve McQueen in The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and a more talkative Charles Bronson in Hard Times (1975). In fact Fight Club’s bare knuckles fisticuffs resembles Walter Hill’s Hard Times quite a bit though with homoerotic overtones. I couldn’t see (the great) Walter Hill or (the great)  Charles Bronson being too happy with the Fight Club script. Amusingly, in the film, Pitts’s character is Tyler Durden, a soap salesman, and Bronson once said to Roger Ebert in an interview (April 07, 1974 ) about his acting “I’m only a product like a cake of soap, to be sold as well as possible”. Soap aside I’d back the American Lithuanian ex coal miner , GI turned actor Bronson over Brad in a fight. But, Brad is certainly cool.

But the problem, for me is the film which a little serious and solemn despite many dark humour inserts. It’s to nihilistic for me. And if I want a struggle between the ego and the id I’ll watch Forbidden Planet (1956) again.

Will I watch it again? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not, though it’s fun watching the leads. Maybe. Don’t know.

The book I have not read and I’m not sure I will. By all accounts the film is reasonably faithful to the book (in theme if not in narrative) but I cant buy into the film’s emphasis on masculinity (of this type), and rejection of self-care through fight clubs which is meant to be an attack on consumerism and materialism. Sure the modern world sucks and we want to tap into the real, the visceral, the primitive. My advice, get back to the earth, find some dirt, get a hoe, dig and plant a vegetable patch, maybe raise a few chickens. It would be much more satisfactory but a lot less cool and unlikely to be made into a movie. Well, not nowadays, though in the early 70s the back to the earth solution was the solution in book, film and life to the excesses of the modern world.

So why is this book here? Because I picked it up for .50c at an op shop … no one said this blog was about books and films I like … just about films and and their associated tie in books, seen or unseen, read or unread.

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