Fight Club: 25 Years of Mayhem & Soap
Fight Club (1999). Poster image by Joshua Budich.
Quit calling it a “cult” classic and give this flick its flowers.
Fight Club is one of the best movies ever made, but most people hated it when it came out. It was a commercial flop when it was released back in 1999. I was there on a date with my high school girlfriend to witness a half full auditorium on opening weekend, and I blame a weak marketing campaign for this movie’s underwhelming box office performance because Fight Club is one of the best movies ever made. It snuck into theaters without any hype despite having Brad Pitt was one of its stars. Dude was on an A-list winning streak during the 90s. I know that’s why my girlfriend wanted to see Fight Club. When I mentioned the movie to her, she knew nothing about it, but she saw a TV ad for the movie, and she was in. I’ll give her more credit than that; she also recognized David Fincher as the director, and she liked Seven. Understandable. That’s another excellent 90s movie that featured the Fincher/Pitt combo.
I discovered Fight Club by word-of-mouth from one of my coworkers (shout out to Phillipo’s Pizza, R.I.P.). We were working a Saturday shift. He had seen Fight Club the night before and was telling me about it at work, and he sold me on seeing it. He mentioned that it was based on a book by a local author named Chuck Palahniuk. Hadn’t heard of him, but after I saw the movie, I went out and bought the book. If it hadn’t been for a strong recommendation from a friend, I might have missed its theatrical run. That would have been a shame because Fight Club was a spectacular experience from the moment the Dust Brothers zapped us through the Narrator’s brain to the Pixies serenading the end of modern society. The rest of the world would catch on to the vibe and show it the respect it deserves as a modern classic. Ten years after its release, after it was slammed by critics and left behind by its studio, Fight Club was praised as the definitive cult film.
Even if I’d slept on this movie when it was released, it would have been impossible for me to miss Fight Club completely because it played well in college dorms, which is where I found myself in the early 2000s. Back then, I was less amused by the movie’s take on Palahniuk’s satire and more interested in viewing it as a straightforward assault on capitalism, a theme that a lot of my peers in college liked to grab hold of. It was a middle finger to the establishment, built by the Boomers on the shoulders of the Greatest Generation. It was Project Mayhem. That message has a lot of appeal to a young man. The actual fighting in Fight Club was both a form of extreme psychotherapy for the Narrator (Edward Norton) and hazing for entry into the fraternity of space monkeys led by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), the split-personality made-up person as only seen by the Narrator. Everything about this movie is cynical, but most people don’t pick up on it immediately. They see the shocking behavior and violence the members of Fight Club demonstrate and think it is a literal condemnation of modern society. It is also that. Fight Club is its own pair of dueling personalities. It is also an example of a production that had all its parts moving in perfect synchronization, and the result is a perfect adaptation of Palahniuk’s work. Hats off to screenwriter Jim Uhls for keeping the dialogue laced with Palahniuk’s nihilistic banter and to Director David Fincher, who’s signature brand of storytelling was the right choice to visualize the bonkers plot of Fight Club. Shoutout to The Dust Brothers for their score, which could only exist if it was composed in the late 90s. Listen to it, and you’ll get it.
I recently watched the 10th Anniversary Blu-Ray edition of this movie (with audio commentary from Fincher, Pitt, Norton, and Bonham Carter), and it seems as like Brad Pitt played a bizarro version of himself and Edward Norton played a more muted version of himself. That is a sloppy way to tell you that these roles were made for them to play. They were perfectly cast, but Fight Clubs standout performance comes from Helena Bonham Carter. In the commentary, she said that her scenes were filmed weeks apart, so she had to return to her Marla Singer character several times after having not been on set for a minute, and she was brilliant. I can’t imagine that she’s as bleak in her normal day-to-day as Marla came off, but Helena Bonham Carter understood the assignment. She was the black heart of a movie devoid of a soul.
Image by FFP.
What does that mean?
Fight Club is a story about a guy in his 30s who is completely disconnected from his white-collar life despite doing everything he was supposed to do to achieve success. Go to college. Graduate. Get a job. Get your own place. Fill it with stuff. Live your life. He did all of that yet he feels that his lifestyle is slowly killing him. He can’t sleep, and he’s miserable. He just wants to find some temporary relief for his insomnia, so he tries group therapy sessions. They help, but they become a short-term solution once Marla starts showing up to them (specifically the testicular cancer survivors’ group). She makes it impossible for our Narrator to find peace in these therapy sessions again, which is when Tyler Durden shows up (in the Narrator’s mind), and the whole damn thing gets turned upside down. This movie doesn’t celebrate the Narrator’s awakening; it heralds it in with a gunshot to the head and skyscrapers crumbling all-around. Soulless. Nothing.
A lot has been said and written about Fight Club in the twenty-five years since its release. I’ve listened to people deconstruct the homoerotic undertones between the Narrator and Tyler Durden, the movie’s theme of self-actualization, and how it makes the argument that true happiness is not derived from the things we buy because the things we own eventually own us. All of these things can be true with a work of art like Fight Club because it offers plenty of philosophical food for thought and social commentary. It’s inappropriately funny and unapologetically offensive. It is aggressive and thoughtful, even though it doesn’t exist. That’s the first rule.
Image by Cultrbox.
