1999 movieRating: 18/20
Plot: An office worker befriends a soap maker on an airplane. Love triangles and fisticuffs ensue. They form the titular club, something that I'm probably not even supposed to be typing about. It's all fun and games until somebody suggests blowing stuff up and a guy with man tits gets a hole in his head.
Oh, man. This one's so dense! Dense and endlessly entertaining, a film with the substance to match its bombastic style, one that just shimmers. I remember watching this for the first time back when I lived in a yellow house. It shook me, and I thought about the movie for days and days. I even lost sleep because of the movie. Of course, it did completely ruin Chuck Palahniuk novels for me because they suddenly all had the same exact narrator--Edward Norton. Ah, Edward Norton. I don't know if I want to even like you since my wife's got a thing for you, but you're just so good in every movie you're in. And anytime an actor can make me not hate narration, that's a plus. The way he screams, "The first person to come out of this fucking door gets a lead salad, you understand?" or explains that "This chick Marla Singer did not have testicular cancer" and was a liar. The way he catches a giant bag of liposuctioned fat. The way he stares at a CGI penguin. But mostly that fight he has with himself in his bosses office? That scene is off the hook (as the kids would say). And Brad Pitt is just electric, always about a scream and a point-at-his-own-head away from transforming right into Nicolas Cage right on the screen. The performance is so good that you just can't imagine anybody else rocking that ironic (iconic?) bathrobe or swinging those nunchucks. Both performances bring out the subtle-and-not-subtle-at-all dark dark comedy in this story. And the movie is very funny. Just listen to Helena Bonham Carter (she's about perfect, too, and very sexy in kind of a filthy way) and Pitt's orgasmic outbursts, or better yet, just try to figure out what's going on when Norton interrupts a love-making session of theirs and Pitt comes out of the room with giant rubber gloves. A personal favorite bit of comedy is the look the woman at the thrift store gives when Norton announces, "I want bowel cancer." And Meat Loaf is in this! With tits! Tom Waits also gets a song in there, the delirious "Goin' Out West," and did I hear incorrectly or was there a Wilhelm during the plane crash fantasy? Fight Club's a movie that begs you to watch it again and again, one of those in which you might pick up a little something new during subsequent viewings. Did I notice the Tyler glitchiness the first time? That first non-glitchy shot of Tyler at the airport--what a line there. This is a movie about the balance between accepting life as it is and complete nihilism, about people--especially men--actually feeling something. You know, like a punch to the nose.
7 comments:
I kinda had to get past the crazy Pitt the first time I saw this. Like the 12 Monkeys Pitt, crazy Pitt.
Ed Norton is great. He's super awesome in Moonlight Kingdom, a super awesome movies.
I need to watch this again. I saw it when it came out and would give it about a 15, but since then it's become a part of the culture, and everyone seems to like it more than me. Maybe I'll watch it next week.
I get to write about 'Moonrise Kingdom' next.
Speaking of Pitt...star of 'Johnny Suede,' the Oprah Movie Club pick for June. You're both watching it on Netflix, right?
I never really liked Fight Club. I guess its my lack of real consumerism, and never shopping at Ikea, but it never once resonated with me. I have never felt the need to get into a fight with someone because I feel like the world is not treating me right or something. There are some good things about this film. The performances are outstanding, Norton, Pitt....even Helena Bohham Carter is able to keep her overacting in check in a role that is very prone to that happening. If we had the Helena of the last five years in this role, she would have gone way over the top...instead she is believable with just the right amount of annoyance and sympathy for the character.
The movie goes on way too long, and the ending is so surreal and so unbelievable that it really detracts from the shcck of the resolution to the Pitt/Norton situation. I saw this in the theaters in 1999.....I liked it all right then, and on your scale would have given it a 15......I just saw it again (after catching bits of it for years and years) a couple weeks ago, from beginning to end. Without that magnificent payoff of the schizophrenia being a shock surprise, it dragged and got kind of dumb in parts. There were three movies made in a four year period that I certainly dont enjoy as much now as I did the first time I saw them. The Usual Suspects, The Sixth Sense, and Fight Club. You watch them the first time, and are blown away by the twist ending. You watch them a second time so you can spot the clues to the twist ending. However you try to ever watch them again, and you find out that the ENTIRETY of the movie rests on those twists...that they are cotton candy fluff otherwise, and have very little substance. Its the exact opposite problem that No Country For Old Men has....weird huh?
A 14 for me now.......and I bet if I watch it again in a few years, it will drop another point.
I honestly thought I would have the same reaction, Barry. It had been a while since I'd seen this. And you might be right about the movie being too long. I do think there's more than enough substance here to make it not quite the gimmick that 'The Sixth Sense' was.
I don't know why I'm picking on 'The Sixth Sense' though. I saw it once and liked it. No real desire to see it again though.
I didn't read the "need to get into a fight" as the result of the world not treating them right. I think it has more to do with feeling something real in a world that is often very fake. The exchange of pleasantries, asking people how they're doing when you don't really care, the plastic-ness of our society. It all shapes us into apathetic, unfeeling human beings, and getting punched in the nose felt good for them because they were at least feeling something.
I honestly respect the fact that its a movie that tries to say something. The only issue I had with it, was that I didnt properly appreciate that message either then or now. It just never resonated with me on any level. Its really not an issue with the movie, just with me.
And you are right about The Sixth Sense. You can watch it again, to see how faithfully M. Night stays with the Willis is a ghost thing, but once you get past that, its not nearly as entertaining. Some movies improve with repeat viewings, and others are made to see once and thats it.
i cancelled netflix when the last 5 movies i looked for were not there. saw johnny suede ages ago, i'll see if the library has it.
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