Revisiting David Fincher's "Fight Club"

Somebody, I can’t remember whether it was Groucho Marx or Woody Allen, once said that he wouldn’t belong to any club that would have him as a member.  This is the first flash of wisdom that comes to my mind after seeing what the central character of Fight Club experiences.  Perhaps it has something to do with my being male, and this flick is nothing if it isn’t an insight into the pent-up aggression that all men (or at least the straight ones) in modern society must feel, at least at one time or another.  The violence for which this movie is primarily known is certainly not the worst in modern cinema, but it has to be some of the most intense.  If there’s a movie I’ve seen that is more grotesque and disturbing, while at the same time engrossing and fascinating, I can’t quickly think of it.

Edward Norton portrays a man, whose name is not initially given to us, who can’t sleep.  Why can’t he sleep?  He’s not sure.  He only knows that he’s miserable.  He hates his job.  He hates his boss.  He hates living alone.  He can’t find any meaning to his life.  He narrates this story with the type of lines Hunter S. Thompson or Robert B. Parker would write in their pulpy novels; the kind of things only a man would say, and most likely only to other men (in one scene, “I want to destroy something beautiful; I wanted to break open oil tankers and pour crude on all of those pretty French beaches I’ll never see,” etc.).  He goes to all sorts of group therapy meetings, dealing with afflictions from which he doesn’t suffer, using the suffering of others to make his own seem less by comparison.  This newfound outlook brings him sleep, until he notices Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) appearing at all of these meetings, too.  She’s another like him, and it eats at his craw that there’s someone else in the room that isn’t really in pain; he needs to know he’s the only one in the room who’s really okay.

He next meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a stranger on an airplane that speaks to him more directly than perhaps anyone ever has, and seems to understand his inner torment better than even he does.  When our Narrator’s condo explodes in a mysterious gas explosion, he ends up rooming with Tyler in a dilapidated, run-down shack of a house where Tyler makes soap and explosives out of human fat garnered from liposuction clinics which he sells to department stores for twenty bucks a cake (“selling the fat asses of old ladies back to them,” as the Narrator puts it).  Tyler spews anarchic philosophy about being free of society’s rules, not being a slave to our possessions, the hell of being raised by women in a society of male rules.  Tyler begins a wild, raucous sexual affair with Marla, the shallowness of which disgusts our Narrator.

Somewhere in all of this, the two men begin fighting; not out of any disagreement, but supposedly for the adrenaline rush, or hostility towards the world at large, or maybe just because they don’t have anything more meaningful to do.  It becomes an ongoing thing, and pulls in other men who see them fighting and want to share in the energy.  Large numbers of strangers meet on a regular basis to pound the living snot out of each other, then return to their lives the next day, the bruises and gashes and broken noses not seeming to have any effect on their ability to hold jobs.  The sounds of fists landing on jaws and skulls landing on concrete floors pulses along with images of swollen cheeks bursting and eyes blackening, all the more disgustingly interesting for being in slow motion.  Our Narrator tells us that one never feels more alive than after a fight (as my last fight was in the fifth grade, my memory is a bit dim on that), and the club grows and grows.  Perhaps he just finally wanted to be in a club that would have him as a member.

The climax of the film is one of the better "twist endings you're likely to ever see, and in a somewhat unrealistic fashion, brings order to all this chaos.  David Fincher has composed a film that, for me at least, escapes a simple description.  There are turns in the film that demand we suspend our disbelief, or perhaps force us to.  Instead of turning me off to what came next, such turns lured me into what came next.  If I could think of movies with similar imagery to list for comparison, I'd do so, but none come to mind.

I have been a fan Fincher's since his days making music videos (his video for Steve Winwood’s “Roll With It” is still one of the most visually engaging videos of which I can think, and it was made almost twenty-five years ago).  His earlier films Alien³ and The Game were both visually impressive, but it's probably best that he made Fight Club when he did, as given how he has "graduated" to more commercially-acceptable fare like The Social Network and the remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, he probably wouldn't have been able to make a film like this now.

Different viewers may have different takes on the deeper meaning of our Narrator’s struggles with his outlook on life and Tyler Durden’s ultra-radical, nihilistic rants and raves, any of which may have merit.  As for myself, I don’t think the meaning is as deep as some others have stated, but I do think it’s deeper than a mere statement about men needing to find an outlet for the pent-up aggression in an ever-increasing pansy-fied society.  Fight Club is not for the faint of heart; humorous in places due to its out-and-out assault on our ideas of logical behavior (especially its closing scene), but gut-wrenching in others as we realize the depths of madness to which the Narrator has fallen.  I couldn’t not watch this movie.  On that basis, I recommend it, but if you do see it, don’t come whining and crying to me if you couldn’t take it (how’s that for focusing my male aggression?).

John Carter ("of Mars," damn it...)

Upon seeing the first promotional materials for Disney’s John Carter almost nine months ago, and with each trailer, TV spot or web clip of the flick I’ve seen since, the first phrase to cross my mind each time has been “Dear Lord, I hope it does not suck…”  Let’s face it – a story that was written a hundred years ago?  If it held any appeal at all, then SURELY it would’ve been filmed by somebody at some point, right? (well, it was filmed by somebody before, a mere three years ago, but that crap was direct-to-DVD, and had Traci Lords in it, and DID suck, and was never seriously intended for wide audiences, and… but I digress…)

Anyway, I’ve been scared for this film’s fate since I first heard about it going into production more than two years ago.  Most sci-fi/fantasy nerds (such as myself) have read the John Carter books, and given my affection for them, I wanted the movie-going public to share my fondness for these stories.  However, knowing casual movie audiences as I do, I knew it would take skilled filmmakers and skilled marketing to get Joe Moviegoer to give this movie a chance.  C’mon, you can hear the questions, can’t you?  A Civil War veteran magically transported to Mars?  There’s breathable air on Mars?  Mars has people on it?  Some of those people have four arms?  What the heck is a “Thark?” Swordplay?  Loincloths?  Giant blind apes?  Yeah, surely the same audiences who long for the next Will Ferrell masterpiece or post-pubescent vampire sexual fantasy will beat down the doors to see this…  Of course, Disney didn’t help themselves one bit with their awful marketing of this movie.  Andrew Stanton’s resume was never used as a selling point, and why not??? Surely mentioning Finding Nemo and Wall-E could only have helped a potential audience gain some sort of affinity for the director’s newest work.  Not once did any of the advertising play up the fish-out-of-water theme of the movie (which is a shame, as Carter’s initial disorientation with Mars’ lesser gravity is one of the movie’s funnier moments), instead focusing on making it seem a pure action movie.  Their abysmal failure with last year’s multi-million dollar boondoggle Mars Needs Moms was almost certainly the driving factor in dropping the “…of Mars” moniker from this movie’s title (although Stanton himself denies this), leaving potential audience members who are most likely unfamiliar with the source material to wonder just what the heck a flick titled John Carter would be about.

Oh, sorry - all that being said, I suppose I really should talk about the movie a bit – John Carter is a not-entirely-literal adaptation of “A Princess of Mars,” the very first published work of author Edgar Rice Burroughs, better known as the creator/author of “Tarzan.”  The title character is a Civil War veteran (played by Taylor Kitsch, of TV’s “Friday Night Lights”) who is searching for gold in New Mexico territory and upon stumbling into a cave, is mysteriously transported to a strange land where he finds himself to have superhuman strength.  This world, called “Barsoom” by the natives, but known to us as Mars, is inhabited by strange peoples and beasts with even stranger names and titles, yet he becomes involved in their politics and wars, falls in love with a native princess and helps to save their world from the evil machinations of a god-like race.  Pretty simple stuff, for sure, but it’s pure classic pulp-fiction fun.  For Pete’s sake, who DOESN’T love a rousing yarn about reluctant heroes and princesses in danger and shady evil-doers and magic and swordfights and…?

The stories were first published in 1912, and numerous filmmakers have tried to get them to the screen in some form or another for the next hundred years, but it took $250 million of Disney’s money to finally get it done.  It’s the first live-action film from director Andrew Stanton, who, as mentioned above, brought us two of Pixar’s most beloved films and was involved in the creation of all three Toy Story films as well.  One could argue this is also an “animated” film, as there’s so much CGI involved that one wonders how anyone other than an animator could have brought such an other-worldly vision to the screen.  This movie passes the first test ANY movie must pass – it’s nice to look at.  Movies are a first and foremost a visual experience, and before anything else, they must be (in SOME sense) pleasant to see.  The costumes are fantastic, the locations and sets are incredibly detailed, the photography is first-rate and the CGI is so wonderfully done as to be almost indistinguishable from “reality,” so Stanton must be praised for that much.

Did I find fault with it?  Well, I admit to finding myself comparing John Carter to the source material as I was watching it and feeling another tinge of fear as I heard Martian (Barsoomian?) names and other information being hurled at the audience with such rapid-fire dialogue that I worried those unfamiliar with the books would miss important information, but my movie-going companion that evening had never read the books, and she assured me that she never felt left behind, so perhaps that fear is unfounded (or she’s a frickin’ genius, which is entirely possible).

For those of us who ARE familiar with the books, however, we don’t have much reason to be disappointed.  Are the characters a bit one-dimensional? Yes, but I don’t mind that in this sort of material.  Edgar Rice Burroughs was fantastic at what he did, and Ernest Hemmingway was fantastic at what he did, but they didn’t do the same thing, after all.  Burroughs, who inserted himself as a character in his Barsoom stories, is probably the character with whom we would most identify, despite his relatively minor involvement.  Stanton makes sure that we see young Burroughs’ amazement as he learns just how factual those bedtime stories his “Uncle Jack” told him actually were, but while the rest of the cast of characters aren’t very relatable, I don’t feel that they’re meant to be.  This ain’t “Macbeth” – it’s Saturday morning cartoons, and it works splendidly on that level.

In the end, I enjoyed John Carter.  I’d have enjoyed it more if Disney had marketed the movie better and not caused me such angst in the year leading up to my finally seeing it, but I suppose one could argue that this is my problem, and not Disney’s.  That said, the fears I feel from their lousy marketing job continues, as the resulting negative press (and resulting lack of box office) may prevent Stanton from being allowed to produce the next two chapters in the Barsoom saga that he has planned, and that’s a dang shame, given how well he pulled off this one.