Fight club

Edward Norton is Jack, a young urban professional with the right job, the right furniture and the right bank account who is so bored and filled with self-disgust at his vapid consumerism that he attends support-groups for people dying from various diseases in order to experience some form of human contact. Jack’s life is turned upside down when he meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) who introduces him to the “fight club”, a secret society of men who meet in underground clubs to beat the pulp out of each other. Before long Jack, under the influence of the magnetic Tyler Durden, finds himself commandeering a terrorist organisation committed to smashing the American corporate state. Based on Chuck Palahniuk’s cult novel, director David Fincher deploys a swirling, kinetic and audacious mise-en-scene to represent the fragmented and hyper-alienated psychology of contemporary American society. Though the violence in the film is extreme, “Fight Club” is a highly satirical commentary on machismo and masculine insecurity. On its release “Fight Club” was severely criticised for its elusive and contradictory politics; but contradiction is the essence of the society that the film examines. So this is a virulently anti-Capitalist movie financed by one of the world’s largest media multinationals; this is a feminist film that exalts in masculine aggression; this is a film that postulates that materialism has gone too far while utilising every state-of-the-art digital special effect available. It is always, however, exhilarating and provocative. Cast includes Meat Loaf, Jared Leto and Helena Bonham Carter (terrific as Jack’s resilient chain-smoking s ometimes-girlfriend, Marla). Original soundtrack by The Dust Brothers.