David Fincher’s Fight Club is a funny, disturbing account of male grievance, with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt making dangerous ideas horribly appealing. The later plotting works too hard, but the performances justify the attention.
David Fincher’s Fight Club is a sharp, funny thriller with a persuasive understanding of male self-pity. It knows how gratifying it can be to decide that ordinary life is beneath us, particularly when the alternative comes with Brad Pitt’s face. The anger at consumer culture has force, but the film is most interesting when it watches men enjoying their anger. We recommend it with a reservation about the later plotting, which keeps straining for effect after the satire has already made its point.
Jim Uhls adapts Chuck Palahniuk’s novel with a useful ear for the joke inside the complaint. The narrator’s dissatisfaction is allowed to sound seductive and ridiculous, sometimes within the same thought, and Edward Norton handles that shift without asking for sympathy. His performance gives the film someone whose unhappiness matters even when his conclusions do not deserve our agreement. In a thriller built around male grievance, that capacity for embarrassment is valuable; it keeps the central character from becoming merely a spokesman.
Pitt’s Tyler Durden provides the confidence Norton cannot supply, and Pitt makes that confidence unnervingly enjoyable. We laughed at his certainty, then felt uneasy about how much we enjoyed it. His ease makes the violent philosophy sound like a solution an agreeable person might offer, which explains its appeal better than another speech condemning it would. Helena Bonham Carter’s Marla Singer gives the film a welcome source of friction, especially when the narrator’s difficulty connecting with her exposes how little his rebellion helps him deal with another person.
Jeff Cronenweth’s cinematography makes Pitt’s glamour part of the problem: Tyler looks like someone worth listening to before he has earned the attention. Violence retains an attraction even when it becomes unpleasant to watch. Alex McDowell’s production design makes the choice of surroundings feel bound up with the choice of a personality. That keeps the attack on consumer culture visible rather than leaving it entirely to the dialogue. We think that visual seduction is necessary, though Fincher occasionally enjoys it enough to make his criticism harder to hear.
James Haygood’s editing gives the comedy its speed and makes the changes in mood feel deliberately abrasive. A joke need not provide much relief when another shock is so close behind it. John King and Michael Simpson’s music keeps pressing against the action, an insistent physical accompaniment that suits Fincher’s determination to keep things moving. The combination is exhilarating, although the relentless push can leave a quieter performance, particularly Bonham Carter’s, fighting for attention.
The weakness comes when the thriller mechanics demand more attention than these people. The later plotting stays busy, but the observations about masculinity and consumption grow less precise; provocation begins to feel like a habit. There is no need to describe where the story goes to say that it becomes less convincing as it grows more elaborate. As a satire, it has already found plenty to examine in the narrator’s inability to connect with another person.
Thrillers about disaffected men can flatter their subjects simply by treating every grievance as profound. Fight Club has enough humour to resist that, and Norton keeps the hurt recognisable beneath the posturing. Give it an evening if abrasive comedy is welcome, but keep some distrust in reserve for Tyler.
