Okay, so... okay, wait, who am I again?So having mono completely sucks. I popped about 80 cough drops and dusted off a box o' popsicles in a week's time, just so my throat wouldn't feel terrible for a few seconds. While I was doing this, though, I managed to catch up on a handful of fairly mediocre movies that I had thus far avoided, with the help of HBO On Demand! "Fight Club" seemed like an obvious pick, and I watched it the first night or two that I was sick. Edward Norton! Brad Pitt! Beating the bejesus out of each other! And somehow, soap is involved (I had seen the poster)! Plus, ya know, David Fincher is a pretty okay director; "Seven" is an outstanding thriller, and no matter how many people tell me that the ending's dumb, I think it's brilliant. And like... "Panic Room", yeah, I guess. So yeah, "Fight Club", should be a solid pick!
Woo boy. "Fight Club" is by far the most nihilistic film I have ever seen, but not in the brutally sexy way it should have been. Honestly, I think everything about this movie was done incorrectly. The script is littered with good ideas that end up turning to shit. When Norton and Pitt start beating the crap out of each other and the other men start watching, perplexed and intrigued, genuine excitement is conjured. Most men have not been in an actual fight, and their willingness and (homoerotic) excitement to do so delves into issues of primal masculinity we honestly have not seen addressed in such a mainsteam feature before. There are things this movie can talk about. Instead, we get a gonzo cult organization being formed, lots of confusing sex (no, literally, just damn confusing), and a dead Meat Loaf. "His name is Robert Paulson," my ass; the man's name is Meat Loaf Aday, and he will do anything for love, except that.
I'm also wondering why David Fincher, a director whose other films are completely plot-driven and rarely deal with any issues besides dimly lit fun, would run through this landmine. The entire last third of the movie is a neo-political rant/trippy mindfuck, and he can't even begin to handle it. Fincher's clearly a mood guy: he enjoys playing with shadows, creaky noises, and Jared Leto's hair, and he does these things well. But because he's way outside his range, the result reflects poorly on the actors. I would never call Norton and Pitt's respective performances superb, but given that their characters are basically typified as Superego and Id, they really sink their teeth into the roles and make them entertaining. Hell, their commitment can be seen in every fight scene, where they seem to be taking a bunch of very real shots.
Pitt's character is much more stylish, but is ultimately hollow (spoiler alert: in more ways than one!) because most of the things he does are such utter bullshit. Roger Ebert's review of "Fight Club" may be the best review of his that I've ever read, if only for the lines, " 'It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything,' (Tyler) says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor." A perfect simplification of a character that may appear to be complex. Pitt does a fine job with the character, but not enough to leave him unexposed. As for Helena Bonham Carter's batshit performance, in which she talks and moves like a Looney Tune... let's just say it's been overrated by quite a few.
But no, this is not a complete "Fight Club" slam, because there is one moment at the start of the movie (the movie begins very well, by the way) that contained every inch of raw emotion the film should have tried for but never got close to again. I'm talking about the Chloe scene, by far the best scene in the film, by far the best performance in the film. Norton's character journeys through night groups of terminally ill people to leech their emotion and find something to prick his numb existence; an interesting concept, undoubtedly, and one executed nicely in "Fight Club"'s first third. Then he gets into a tizzy because Helena Bonham Carter shows up to these meetings too, even though she's clearly as healthy as he is. During one of these groups (I'm pretty sure it was for some type of cancer), a bald, gaunt, sad-looking woman named Chloe approaches the podium to muted applause:
"Well, I'm still here," she says to the crowd, including a thoughtful Norton and Carter. "But I don't know for how long. That's as much certainty as anyone can give me. But I've got good news: I no longer have any fear of death." The onlookers clap politely, and the group's leader smiles encouragingly at Chloe, who gives an appreciative nod. And then the speech becomes the most gut-wrenching in recent memory.
"But... I am in a pretty lonely place. No one will have sex with me. ...I'm so close to the end and all I want is to get laid for the last time." She looks around wistfully, and then approaches the microphone closely. "I have pornographic movies in my apartment, and lubricants, and amyl nitrite..." She speaks until the group leader grabs the mic and sternly says, "Thank you, Chloe. Everyone, let's thank Chloe."
It's just that this scene, this minor scene that has nothing to do with the rest of the film, is more affecting than anything else presented during its 2-hour-plus running time. I've only watched it once, because I don't think I could take a second time. Rachel Singer has approximately two minutes of screen time, and in that frame she crafts a character at once funny, sad, horny, desperate, self-loathing, and deeply in denial. Not only does she illustrate the general point of the film's first third, but she epitomizes the theme of whitewashed futility that hangs over the film but is never fully analyzed. The way that those last few perverse words stumble out of her mouth to show how deeply intent this poor woman is to find someone, anyone, to share a moment of happiness with overshadows all of the unfounded psychobabble pouring out of Brad Pitt's mouth. At least Fincher had the foresight to pull the reins back in the scene and give Chloe a moment or two to summarize how horrible this world can be sometimes.
The only other mention of Chloe is much later in the film, when Helena Bonham Carter mentions that she's dead to Edward Norton after engaging in some more confusing sex. Norton doesn't really care. I do, because I know that means that she's not coming back for an encore, and that I've got another hour of Ed and Brad and a tub full of twist endings. Oh well. The Chloe scene in "Fight Club" should always be remembered for lending a human touch to a film too preoccupied with its ludicrous morals. If Judi Dench got an Oscar for acting really fucking British for ten minutes in "Shakespeare In Love", Rachel Singer, a mostly unknown character actor, deserves to at least be acknowledged. Great scene, great performance, shrug-worthy movie.
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