Release Date: Nov. 17
Director: David Fincher
Writers: Jim Uhls, Chuck Palahniuk
Cinematographer: Jeff Cronenweth
Starring: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter
Studio/Run Time: Twentieth Century Fox, 139 mins.
A beautiful and unique snowflake
David Fincher’s film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club doesn’t tell us anything about consumerism that we don’t already know. That’s exactly why it’s a stunning piece of cinema, and a searing indictment of a society wandering a labyrinth of material comfort and spiritual discontent.
Edward Norton’s unnamed insomniac milquetoast is a font of dark comedy, playing the suit to Brad Pitt’s cocksure and scenery-devouring Tyler Durden. Their titular hyper-violent recreational group represents the ultimate escape from the nepenthe of the “Ikea nesting instinct,” promising a return to the Paradise Lost of a mythical ideal masculinity. The end result is a gun in Norton’s mouth and the realization that we are destined to either destroy the illusions we create, or be destroyed by them. You are more than your khakis, and this is more than a movie: It’s a brutal portrait of our own quiet desperation.