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. | Fight
Club (1999) |
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Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s groundbreaking novel of the same name, Fight Club is the strongest social statement ever made in cinema. Somewhat a foster child of A Clockwork Orange, Fight Club creates reason for every punch pulled, every kick delivered. Where ACO was about Alex and society, Fight Club is about every man and society. If violence is a language…Fight Club speaks it as eloquently as ACO. Pitt and Norton give performances that would’ve made Stanley Kubrick proud. Fight Club doesn’t have one message. It is religion for the disillusioned modern man. Fight Club just doesn’t bring the house down; it bombs it and shits in its remains. A tormented insomniac finds a cure in crying with people in terminal disease support groups. Only then can he sleep. The insomniac (Norton) seeking contentment and completion has taken on himself to furnish his condo with extravagances and making it a “dream” one. Unknown to him, his attachment to his possessions deepens and he descends into a materialism he doesn’t understand. Everything changes when he meets Tyler Durden (Pitt), a flight companion who sells and makes soap. Durden and he create an alternate support group. Where men beat each other up. Fight Club, grows with each bloody night, evolving into an anarchist underground movement. Caught between the coupling of Tyler and support-group staple Marla (Carter), the narrator finds himself once more, a cog in someone else’s grander scheme of things. Fight Club is the sort of film that might never have been made. And the only reason it did get made was because of the actors’ and director’s love for the novel/project. The actors give performances so riveting that you’ll never find yourself blinking. The humour is so black that it leaves third degree burns. The script is so intelligent that it will leave every schmuck a Buddha. The incredible strength of the performances never lets them be subordinate to the glittering set pieces. Palahniuk himself was happy with the adaptation with the minor changes made and his own commentary is available on the DVD. Just when audiences thought Fincher wouldn’t be able to beat himself with previous efforts like Se7en and The Game, he made the film that all similar films in the future will be judged by. Never has a film had more memorable lines of dialogue. You’ll find yourself quoting Fight Club for a long time and biting the temptation to quote it after everybody gets bored. The first
time you watch Fight Club, you’ll be in shock over the construction
and the secrets. The second time you’ll begin to see the
patterns in it all and laugh harder and smirk more at Tyler’s
ideas. All subsequent viewings will bring more joy. The only flaw
is the ending which doesn’t work on all levels and is different
from the novel. Critics of FC claim that Pitt brought a script
doctor to give more flesh to his character but judging from the
result, one can only be impressed. Whether Fight Club would’ve
been a superior film if the budget was lower and the actor’s
were unknowns is impossible to decide. We can only take it for
what it is.…one of the best films of all time.
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