Fight Club (1999)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Fight Club (1999) – D. Fincher

I’m not sure why I watched this again; the primary emotions elicited are disgust and fear (anxiety). Perhaps it was the result of all that free-floating angst just before y2k? In any event, 20+ years later, the moral quandaries raised by the film are even more fraught. If Edward Norton’s unnamed Narrator sees “disruption” as freedom from the constraints of society and perhaps a Good Thing, is this acceptable now, in the context of the Trumpian disruptors? Was it even acceptable in the context of the film itself in 1999 when pitched ultimately as terrorism (albeit against economic systems rather than people)? But those culture jammers (such as Negativland) were such heroes! Moreover, if Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who starts a no holds barred “fight club” with the Narrator, represents unfettered masculinity, is this what we want now, when the toxic variety has clearly made life worse for everyone anywhere on the gender continuum? (Hard to say how love interest Helena Bonham-Carter feels – ambivalent to say the least?). Director David Fincher took Chuck Palahniuk’s novel and made it into a hyper-stylised film (music by the Dust Brothers) that doesn’t pull its punches (so to speak) – it’s violent and unrelenting, looking into the gaping hole in the average consumer’s heart and trying to find something to fill it, something more primal and yes, amoral. This is probably not the answer we need.  But the film itself is visceral and daring, encouraging viewers to identify with its flawed characters and to become morally compromised as a result. Or not -- if you accept that the Narrator is insane, which he may very well be.