Friday, 15 October 1999

WEEKEND PREVIEW

Today's Weekend Preview has been eaten whole by my Fight Club review. For a look at what else is coming out and for all the box office info, read Box Office Extra after noon EDT.

THE GREAT, THE BAD A** & THE UGLY AS HELL: I think it's fair to say that turtles are popping back into their shells this week as Fight Club comes to town. But I would suggest to you that what they fear is the truth. What they fear is a movie that has caused them to react, not by showing gratuitous violence, but by slapping them in the face and allowing them nowhere to run. Fight Club is a bit brutal at times. But there is nothing, not a single moment, as violent as a man having his head crushed in a table vise. There are only two gunshots in the entirety of Fight Club, less than in almost any episode of any cop show on TV.

I don't want to be unclear about this. In my opinion, the idea of limiting art in any way in fear of creating dangerous copycats is foolish and thoughtless. If you rail against censorship in any arena, such as fighting the MPAA's demands on Eyes Wide Shut, and you suggest that Fight Club should not have been made, I believe that your view is completely hypocritical. The whole nature of being against censorship is that we defend the freedom of expression, ESPECIALLY when it disturbs us. Everything offends someone. Just look at all the guff that Disney has gotten over bizarre complaints about some of their cartoons. Pitchforks are penises. People see what they want to see.

Fight Club is a movie about Jack. When the movie begins, he is lost in a life of blind consumerism and lethargy. There are no heroes in his world and really, no villains either. He is the walking dead. Just as Thomas A. Anderson is in The Matrix. Just as Lester Burnham is in American Beauty. But then, Jack meets Marla Singer. From the minute he sees her, he knows that there is something there. Something passionate. But something he'll never fully possess because as insane as she is, she is not an object. She smokes where she wants to smoke, she says what she wants to say, she does almost anything she feels like, including jaywalking, without being hit by a single fast-moving car. Then Jack meets Tyler Durden. And Tyler is going to change his life. He is going to wake him up. Just as Morpheus leads Thomas into the rabbit hole after Neo is already searching, leading a double life as a "jack-in" dealer in The Matrix. Just as Ricky Fitts' marijuana and double life give Lester a road to choose in American Beauty as he goes on his quest for Angela or what Angela symbolizes.

The journey begins for all three. For Jack, the trip is one into a search for the lost manhood of his generation. It's bare knuckle fighting, bruises and blood. But even when you close in on his world of the Fight Club, all the men celebrate the experience, not just the victory. For Lester Burnham, his journey is about the chase for the one thing in the world, the objectified girl, who gets his penis erect without him helping himself so that he can feel like a man again. For Neo, his teachers are there to show him what is possible, as expressed through Asian fighting techniques, guns, and ultimately, the power of his mind to control his world.

Which quest is the most disturbing to you? The Matrix is a fake world, so killing fake people, though we know that their bodies are going to die back in their pods, isn't so disturbing. After all, better to be dead than to live in a pod. And isn't the same true in American Beauty? YouÕre better off dead and buried than walking around dead to the world. And we have the artifice of the film to keep up safe and at a distance. Fight Club hits, literally and figuratively, at home. It's not an artificial world at all. There is blood, there is vomit, there are teeth. "If this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight." It is the great irony of the piece that the people who are most scared by Fight Club are clearly the people who need some sort of punch in the gut the most.

The second act of Fight Club is where people seem to be aiming their barbs. If you are SPOILER shy, this might be a good time to scroll down to the next article. I won't be giving away major SPOILERS here, but I will be going down the path of the story, which you may not want to know before seeing the movie.

In the second act, Fight Club evolves into Project Mayhem. The goals of Project Mayhem are as simple as the title: create mayhem. Project Mayhem is Tyler's project about which Jack knows nothing. He is kept completely in the dark because Tyler seems to know that Jack will not approve. Even the recruiting of Fight Club members into Project Mayhem starts without Jack knowing, though he becomes part of the initiation ritual of waiting through three days of abuse and bad weather to be allowed to join.

But here is where people lose track of their willingness to think about Fight Club clearly. Project Mayhem is a cult just as the 12-step programs that Jack starts attending and becomes addicted to are his cult. Whatever self-awareness the men who join and fight in Fight Club get they give up to Tyler Durden and Project Mayhem. They give up their individuality just after they've achieved it. They are not free men creating havoc. They are still followers, just following another God. And Jack knows that Tyler has gone too far. He says it over and over and over again. Why don't audiences who hate this movie hear those pleas? They are the pleas of the audience, too.

Of course, the FC haters think that "others" really don't think that Tyler's going too far. They fear that Tyler will be seen as doing the right thing and that Gen Xers will follow his lead. They fear, like southern whites feared blacks, what they do not know. And that encompasses all of Gen X. But I digress...

The pleas that Tyler let Jack in, that he slow down, are completely rejected by Tyler. The world that Jack has helped created, in pursuit of his own mental freedom, has become dangerous even to him. And that's where the third act begins.

SPOILER WARNING 2: If you haven't seen American Beauty or The Matrix or Fight Club, there are significant spoilers in the next two paragraphs...

Now, in reference to the other two movies, in The Matrix, the second act is spent training Neo to understand his power. But as an audience, we see a force opposing Neo that is so great that we root for his training to take hold. Ultimately, the trip of The Matrix is really only a small slice of the ambition of Fight Club. The whole movie fits into Fight Club's second act, which makes the prequel/sequel combo to come completely appropriate. The road that Neo travels ends only in his finding his power. What will he do with the power? We don't know yet. The Wachowskis do, but they aren't telling. But the third act of Fight Club, sudden painful self-awareness is never broached in The Matrix. What will Neo feel when he becomes conscious of being a "God?" Fascinating question. I can't wait for the next movies.

In American Beauty, Lester breaks through the mire in the second act only to have to deal with the consequences in the third, just like Fight Club. But when Lester catches his wife cheating, he doesn't care and the audience laughs. She is already dead to him and to us. When Lester gives up his job, the world doesn't come to an end. There are no noticeable consequences. In fact, he has a new expensive sports car for his trips to the burger joint where he now works. Lester's relationship with his daughter Janey can't get worse and seems likely to improve with Ricky on his side. No consequences.

SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING 3: But in the third act, the chickens come home to roost. Lester gets what he has dreamed of getting and as soon as he realizes that the girl is real and not an object, he recoils. Just as Jack recoils in Fight Club when Bob is killed. Lester's daughter, the only person other than himself who he really cares about, is ready to take off with Ricky, just as Marla, the only person other than himself who he really cares about, announces that she's had enough and isn't going to be party to Jack and Tyler's world anymore. Lester's wife, who found a little of her own freedom, though not enough to truly be free, is ready to kill Lester rather than have his freedom thrown in her face any longer, just as Jack's and Tyler's disciples are ready to emasculate Jack rather than allow him to stop what he has started. And most tragically, Lester's next door neighbor, head buried in his crazed, pained, homophobic rage, has to destroy Lester if he can't join him.

And that's another reason why American Beauty is safer than Fight Club. Because when Jack is clear enough in his mind to decide is he is going to join Tyler or reject Tyler and his mayhem, Jack is in control, not some crazed lunatic. Jack realizes that he has the power and that he always had the power, so he has the gun. He is in control. Lester never has full control, so Lester -- and the audience who identifies with him -- never has to take full responsibility.

In the third act of Fight Club, Jack is shaken awake by his own mind this time, not through Tyler. He survives Tyler's "near-life" experience of the car wreck. Bob, who is to be discarded as though he were compost by the Project Mayhem crew, is given a name. Even if the Project Mayhem crew doesn't understand what that means, Jack does. And Jack has to face his responsibility in everything that has happened. He tries to stop Project Mayhem's big project, but Tyler has been everywhere that he goes looking for help. So he runs and runs and runs to try and stop Project Mayhem himself. But he can't. Tyler won't let him. When push comes to shove, Jack is clear enough in his mind to know that he has to either join Tyler or kill Tyler. There is no mistake to it. He makes a choice. He chooses to kill Tyler. Tyler doesn't get to kill Jack. Jack chooses clarity over the great style and fun of anarchy. Jack would rather be Jack than to be Tyler. How could anyone ask for a more positive message?

Don't get me wrong. I really, really like American Beauty. I think it is a wonderful movie, loaded with great acting and strong imagery. But what does that ending say? It says that you should reach for the great moments of clarity in your life, but in the end, fate will do as it wishes. Better to have had 5 minutes of freedom and to die than to spend your whole life walking around dead. At the end of Fight Club, Jack is free for the first time. He is sane. And he has love. And even with the world falling down around them, he has hope for the future.

The reason Fight Club is so disturbing to some audiences is because every audience has more than its share of Ikea Jacks in the room. Look how far Jack has to go to find himself. Look how painful that road is. Wouldn't it be easier, even fun, to quit your job, work out and look great and have beautiful young women think you're sexy? And when that wet dream ends, isn't it more comforting to know that some whack job is going to stop you because he misunderstands you rather than realizing that even in your freedom, YOU have to take the responsibility? YOU have to raise a gun to your own head if necessary?

Fight Club is David Fincher's first true masterpiece. It is the finest film released to date this year. And when all the shouting dies down, it will gets its full due. Eyes Wide Shut is a wonderful piece of art. But it will always be for true film cineastes only. Fight Club will be remembered for its over-accessibility and for its message...its call to arms. Its easy to pretend that Fight Club is not pointing a finger at you by yelping about the violence in the film. But film history will remember that Fight Club called us all to raise arms against our own complacency, not against the offices of credit card companies. It is the call to arms of the millennium in film after film after film. And it is time for us all to wake up and smell our power.

READER OF THE DAY: This came from LJ, a woman who coincidentally is a Boomer, not a Gen-Xer: "I abhor violent films, avoid them at all cost. But I loved Fight Club. Men releasing their frustration with fists rather than guns is something rarely seen in movies. TV boxing matches, which have shown ears being bitten off, were far more violent. Even the movie's terrorist bombings made a point to ensure buildings were empty, no one hurt. Anita Busch seems to have a hidden agenda for trashing this film. Did she examine the STORY or simply the action of the film? The film's messages are strong ones. She needs to see the film again and again until she understands it. It just might wake her up."

And this from McG (not the video director, at least as far as I know): "Personally, I haven't been able to read enough about Fight Club all year long. And despite the abundant hype and anticipation with which I will enter Friday's commercial premiere, based on everything I've read by those who have seen it, I don't expect to be the least bit disappointed. You're one of the few journalists who is touching upon the fact that a huge contingent (I won't bother demographing the group) is DYING to see this movie. This movie "speaks to (many of) us" on so many levels we can't stand the wait! The problem I have with THR account is their depiction of this movie sort of bombarding unsuspecting moviegoers just looking for a flick to eat some popcorn to. I can't imagine that any thoughtful, observant moviegoer would feel anything less than fully responsible for their ticket purchase based on the marketing of this film. There should be no surprises for the audience. Maybe a significant handful of heartthrob-motivated Brad Pitt fans will be devastated by the movie, but they're just as deserving of this fate as those who saw Natural Born Killers cuz they thought Woody was "cute in Cheers".

And lastly, but I feel most importantly, I think this movie is a GREAT influence for violence in society. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our most aggressive and hair-trigger tempered folks re-romanticized the fistfight over the handgun? I, for one, would feel the world was a safer place if we all start slugging each other again, instead of popping people with our handguns. Keep on trucking."

E ME: Fight Club: say it, don't spray it. Let me know how it went for you.