# Fight Club (1999)

### reviewed by
Neil Sarver

Yeah, there's spoilers... Stay back.

I have to admit, I have mixed feelings on this one.

First off, I have to admire the filmmakers for getting such a genuinely subversive movie without even seriously undercutting their own subversion. That almost never happens in Hollywood films... or, at least, in movies with a subversive text, the occasional subversive subtext slips by, but that's a story for another day.

Secondly, the film is very well done. It's an entertaining, hilarious two and a half hour trip. The acting is dead on. The pace is quick and sharp. The score moved the story along and kept the mood.

So, what could possibly be my problem?

My problem is the film never made up its mind on a position. It presented two very extreme positions, for purpose of satire, so in clearly judging the one - the yuppie lifestyle - it should by process of elimination pick the other - violent revolution. But instead of advocating that position forcefully, it tries instead to look unjudgingly atthat position without showing any middle ground positions.

Not that the middle ground positions should have won out, as that would clearly have undercut the films subversion. However in not presenting them, when they should seem reasonably obvious to the average person, it can't agrue against them. This leaves its argument wanting.

It also spends a great deal of time exploring the beauty of the "Fight Club" in its original form of basement groups of guys fistfighting. I understood how they were living then rather than merely existing as they had before. The film very effectively conveyed that sense of reinvigorated male passion... and raised my testosterone levels and I was there with the film, baby...

.... but then it never addresses how becoming a uniform Brown Shirt in Tyler's little army is anything like living. It seems like the same kind of half-existance in slavery that they were supposedly trying to get away from. A point that it, again, seemed remarkably unaware of. It tried to draw attention away from that by making the narrator's point of view be against the destruction and death and arguing both sides of that.

I know people are going to call these things the delightful and thought provoking ambiguities of the film, but I think they are actually glaring examples of not thinking the whole thing through.

Most of all, I'm disappointed that when someone finally manages a chance to make a film this subversive, it didn't make its argument better.

    --
    Neil
    --
    The Bleeding Tree
    http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/3271/
    --
    "Republicans is fine if you're a multi-millionaire.  Democrats is fair
    if all you own is what you wear.  Neither of 'em's really right 'cos
    neither of 'em care 'bout that Hot Plate Heaven, 'cos they ain't been
    there."
                                                            -- Frank Zappa

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