 |
|
|
|
|
Film Review By Jack Nichols
In the wake of the Littleton, Colorado high school massacre, 20th Century Fox was nervous about having made Fight Club, based on a novel by Chuck Palahniuk and directed by David Fincher (Seven). The studio, in fact, put the film's release on hold for four months because of its bare-bodied violence and then advertised it in such a way as to make it seem innocuous.
But when, please, is it possible to hide Brad Pitt, to turn his appearance into a non-event? What's more, this gripping, fast-moving film has summoned a tidal wave of controversy in New York, premiering, as fate would have it, at the same time that a popular new book about masculinity, Susan Faludi's Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, has surfaced. Ms. Faludi's excellent tome examines the sad 20th century dead-end at which conventional masculine posturing has arrived. Her real-life interviewees tell her in no uncertain terms how they've come to question their successes as men after watching too much advertising on TV, thereupon making sure their bedrooms are replete with proper matching colors, a leap away, to say the least, from presumed manhood's no-longer-useful kow-towing to the warrior pose. Worse, the confused consumer-male, hugging close those unsatisfactory objects he owns, buys unconsciously into the so-called booming economy, wandering away, as a result, from more meaningful parts of himself. Yes, he lives scrupulously according to mainstream advertisers recommendations, but subconsciously recognizes in himself the lifeless sham he's allowed them to create.
Norton's character, obviously, longs to please his new Master, Brad, whose character is named Tyler Durden. With Tyler as his commander, the two men begin their fighting tradition in a local tavern and it spreads far and wide while its purpose—in the Brad Pitt tradition— remains anarchistic, "letting the chips fall where they may" as Brad's Tyler Durden character recommends. Like the protagonists in the Littleton tragedy, Tyler welcomes his own extinction rather than living the conventional male's life he considers so dissatisfying. Under the tutelage of this wildman Tyler, milquetoast Jack abandons his inauthentic environs, embracing Tyler's painful bare-knuckled reality that, at least, makes him feel—if only temporarily—as if he has a more visceral reality in tow. If a sado-masochist's pose is hardly what's needed by yuppies seeking inner validation, Fight Club's criticisms of today's silly consumer culture, nevertheless, hit its target head-on.
Brad Pitt's success as an actor, to this reviewer, always seemed assured because of his androgynous psyche, one that leaps from tough guy to tears with an equal assurance. As he pummels opponents and butches it up in Fight Club, he seems somehow to transform into an increasingly feminine creature. And, as his photo in a mini-skirt on the cover of Rolling Stone declares, he doesn't want it assumed that in reality he's only a "dumb macho hunk." Because, as his fans know, he's not a dumb hunk. He's a provocateur. And Fight Club, in spite of its propensity to violence, has only one casualty and provokes ever intense personal questionings. What makes a man a man? |
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) brings excitement to the life of Jack (Edward Norton) in Fight Club 
© 1997-99 BEI