Never talk about how the film loses some steam in the last third.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
And, I mean, come on, when your film loses steam despite the fact that you have your protagonist shoot himself in the mouth just before he (or at the very least his psychic-split alter ego) blows up like five or six skyscrapers full of financial records.
So, yeah, some third (or is it fifth?) act problems there, but that said the film holds up pretty well. And frankly those visuals of the skyscrapers falling are even a bit more chilling than they used to be, for obvious reasons.
It seems to me the film is still a visceral experience, that it does a good job of calling into question certain priorities/assumptions that we (Americans) have/make about what really matters.
This strikes me as a religious film. (Big shock, right, after I turned Good/Bad/Ugly into a Catholic film?) Fight club itself spreads like a cult, of course, and there are certainly some messianic overtones to Tyler Durden along the way (especially when he's letting himself get beaten to a pulp, arms outstretched, buying their meeting space with his blood). No shock there, right, we're in the western tradition, of course there will be Christ figures rearing their heads. But what came through to me more clearly this time was the fact that many of the critiques of materialism resonate really well with the teachings of Jesus, and also the Judaic principle of jubilee. (If I get too theological on you, feel free to skip to the next paragraph. I'm not trying to convert anyone here.) Jubilee, of course, is an idea resurrected (ha) by Bono and others in the last few years as a catchphrase for Third World debt forgiveness. Historically (Old Testamentally) it was the idea that every 50 years (or was it 49 -- oh, even the scholars aren't sure) all the indentured servants got set free, all the land got thrown back to the original owners or their heirs (or something like that). So Durden's really trying to bring about a jubilee in his quest to destroy credit. Back to zero. This twins nicely with his desire to set men free from their work at "jobs they hate to buy things they don't need". There's a lot of the ascetic tradition tossed in there, too, of course, with the body being punished to help purify the soul. Anyway, what do you think? Are Fincher and Palahniuk presenting some God-free version of religion? What would their Ten Commandments look like?
Now that I think of it, damage to the body to purify the soul is naturally extended to damage to the (monetary infrastructure of) the country to purify the country's soul. I think this is an interesting idea. External stresses can bring out the best or worst in nations. Sadly, the last 150 years haven't been too great at getting the best to come out (with a few exceptions, of course).
So is Fight Club just some incoherent pseudo-Marxist critique of capitalism, or is it more subtle than that? (I'm really asking. I can't quite decide.) Is it popular as a brief stopping place along the way to acquiescing to the bourgeois assumptions of our age, a nice little last rebellious pose for adolescents of whatever age (and I should perhaps still include myself, home-ownership notwithstanding) before slouching off to drudgery and Ikea-addiction? I was half-joking about it being the Catcher in the Rye of the '90s and '00s, but it actually functions in a similar way, it seems to me, railing against the phonies and jerks who just can't see as clearly as the protagonist can.
And how are we to feel at the end of Fight Club? Is it defeat that Tyler is killed/banished? Or has he won now that the buildings are falling? The first time I saw the film I was horrified by the falling buildings. This time it felt like hope. Don't we need a Jubilee?
Am I a monster?
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2 comments:
I have to admit that Wednesday was the first time I had seen "Fight Club". Now that I've been initiated, I believe that everybody in the country has officially seen that movie. It was certainly different than what I was expecting. I remember when it was in the theaters, all of the previews had made me think of it as some kind of action movie provavly set in some kind of a prison. Oh and that it had Brad Pitt in it. I have to admit that with that perception, I was surprised to see it make the Tuesday Night Film Night list (albeit, being shown on a Wednesday night). I was very impressed by the movie, though, and it is certainly one that I'd consider seeing multiple times.
In response to your comments, David, I certainly did not make the "Tyler is Jesus" connection that you made this time. Perhaps it's because I don't have quite the religious background, or because I didn't find myself liking Tyler or the things he was doing very much. I think that I glossed over a lot of the revolutionary speak since to me it really seemed like a cliche worn out fight-the-system kind of message. We all buy crap that we don't realy need. We are all consumers and that makes us woth less than the crap that we buy. The only way to reclaim our identities is to fight the power and destroy the establishment. Forgive me for being a prude, but the world has been ending and decaying and dying for several decades now and the sensationalism and scare tactics are getting tiresome. At the beginning of the movie, the unnamed narrator finds that the only way for him to get any sleep, any peace, is to open up to complete strangers. He goes to support groups mainly for the one-on-one time where he feels that the person on the other end is truly listening and not just "waiting for their turn to speak". Fight Club becomes a replacement for this and replaces words with fists. But then Project Mayhem evolves out of Fight Club and the key to it is the loss of your own identity. I find it hard to reconcile these two things, that the replacement for the very humanizing act of sharing one's thoughts , dreams, and fears must be replaced with the surrendering of one's self to an organization where you do not even have a name until you are dead. I find it difficult to differentiate being owned and controlled by Inglemaar from IKEA versus Tyler of Project Mayhem. But enough about me being a pro-establishment right-wing backwards-thinking elitist. I think I'm focusing too much on critiquing the message of the movie rather than trying to understand it in general. Perhaps on a second viewing, I'd be able to appreciate more the meaning behind Tyler's misison and the overall critique of the American way that is portrayed.
Far more interesting than the political message, I thought was the illustration of the power of the mind. Perhaps it is because I recently saw "Lars and the Real Girl" that I think this, but this movie and "A Beautiful Mind" are great portrayls, to me, of what it is like to be living with a delusion. As David pointed out on Wednesday, I do think that one of the great powers of film is to be able to portray these things in a tangible way for those of us fortunate enough not to have to experience them in everyday life. I believe it is hard for me to imagine my mind being able to work completely independently of myself (or at least, appearing to work completely independently). I certainly think of myself as being in full control of my mind and completely able to perceive what is real and what is unreal. I especially love to contrast this movie with "Lars", where the perspective we see is outside of the person with the delusion. In "Lars", the town acts as if Bianca is real without fully understanding Lars's thoughts or perceptions. In "Fight Club", loyal followers believe that they understand the message that Tyler Durden is preaching, even though the narrator, the one who created Tyler, does not. In both movies, it is clear that the portrayl of the main character is that of a sane and rational person who has an overactive mind. I feel like there are other points to be made, but I do not want to spoil "Lars" for those who have not seen it yet. It is an excellent movie and one that I'd highly reccommend.
Don't get me wrong. I thought "Fight Club" was an excellent movie and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I guess I just haven't really given in yet to Project Mayhem and its ideals. And don't even get me started on the apparent lack of backup servers for the financial institutions of the United States...
Great points. I think in the end the film is, by design, a little incoherent. That's probably part of what I like about it.
I especially like your point about the world being on the verge of ending for about as long as we can remember. So the question is, who benefits from such a state of persistent doom?
Is FC, in the end, just another tool to keep us docile? Give us our filmic rebellion, as long as we don't *actually* do something subversive in real life?
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