Fight Club (1999)

This post is kind of a special one because it really doesn’t fit into my well organized system of reviews. It doesn’t really go under the Back On Track feature because I’ve seen Fight Club numerous times before but then it also doesn’t go together with the regular reviews that I usually tend to write about movies I’ve seen for the first time. So as I love symbolic meanings, I can say that to me, Fight Club is not just a special movie but even its review on my blog is one of a kind.

As my Friday’s tend to be antisocial due to the unfortunate difference of my geographical location compared to my friends, I’m always up for an amazing movie experience. Since I don’t trust movies I haven’t seen, I sometimes go for the ones I have seen and loved, and by now you’ve probably guessed where this is going: I watched Fight Club, again. And why the hell not? This movie was made in the late 90’s, which is 14 years ago and yet, it is still exciting, relevant and far more better than most of the movies currently in cinemas. Plus, it has Edward Norton, who doesn’t get enough credit nor movie roles, and Brad Pitt, who seems to be crawling back into my life rapidly. Also, can we just take a moment and look at David Fincher’s career – two of his movies are in IMDbs Top 25 (Fight Club #10, Se7en #22) and 7 out of 9 movies he has directed have a higher score than 7.0 (Alien3 and Panic Room still have solid 6.0+).

What’s a bit naive of me, is that I keep forgetting David Fincher, which is so stupid that it hurts. I love Fight Club, I love Se7en and I love Zodiac. The Social Network I love but not with the highest capacity and all the rest of his movies I’ve seen (except Alien3 and I think I’ve not seen The Game) I have highly appreciated and liked. So in a way, Fincher is in my list of top 5 directors together with Tarantino, Nolan, Ritchie and the earlier-Burton. If I would have to start listing my favorite of their movies into an order I would go mad but I do admit that Fight Club would be high up there. Then again, I usually tend to obsess about the movie I’d seen the latest so, go figure.

That all aside, which has almost nothing to do with Fight Club, I must admit that the movie still has my attention after all these years. The thing with Fight Club though, the second and the third and all the following viewings after the first one, will be completely different from each other. After you find out the plot twist you’ll start experiencing the movie differently, each time you sort of discover something new and if you manage to forget details of it, then seeing it again will be even more thrilling. That’s why it’s a cult phenomenon, it somehow manages to change each time you watch it, with you focusing differently or trying to find some logic behind it all. Therefore, I will never get tired of Fight Club because I keep watching it a little bit differently.

This time I tried to see all the elements referring to Durden’s absence. For some reason, I think I’ve never really watched Fight Club so intensively focusing on that aspect and to be honest, I kind of forgot to do it half way through. The movie just sucks you right in and Pitt’s performance as the imaginary friend makes you sort of forget that he doesn’t exist. Edward Norton’s main character is also some what compelling, it’s not just the insomnia that makes him stand out but it’s also the fact that his spirit animal is a penguin. I wonder how this all was explained or written in the book, which I should read, because visually the plot and those little details come across as very mysterious. The whole movie is a bit of a mystery up to a point where it all suddenly makes sense but even as I tried to see the cracks of Durden’s existence, I sort of didn’t care for that at some point and just enjoyed Fight Club as if I’d never seen it before.

There is definitely a lot of details to be described and explained, hidden meanings behind people, characters and objects. For instance, when Durden is making his big speech and gets to a point where he talks about “rock stars”, you can see Jared Leto’s character Angel Face on the background. Sort of ironic since Leto himself is a rock star (30 Seconds to Mars was formed 1998) and I doubt it was just a lucky mistake on the behalf of Fincher – maybe it wasn’t as obvious then but years later, that has all kinds of context in context hidden meanings behind it. I would write  more about things as such but I should really read the book before I try to digest the plot piece by piece. Besides, I’m not very good at that anyway, so I should practice my intense movie viewing process.

To finish off this rather special review-type post on Fight Club, I’d have to say that I would like to see more of Edward Norton. I mean, he has done some solid work, he clearly has the chops to pull of compelling and intense characters but for some reason I can’t recall seeing him lately. Watching his performance on Fight Club made me a bit sad because while I do like Norton in a comedic role (Moonrise Kingdom), I’d prefer him in a dark one. He doesn’t seem to have any serious upcoming roles, neither does he have anything that’s coming out this year: I guess I have to watch Fight Club again. Plus, I could not just listen to Norton talk but stare at Brad Pitt at the same time – perfection!