Review: Fight Club (1999)

Fight Club (1999)

Twenty years later and, man, does Fight Club still pack a punch.

The film has often been rejected by the 'cinema' lovers out there; it has been and still is sometimes labelled as 'macho-porn' - being a testosterone fuelled ride of violence, sex and anarchy - and, perhaps, all of that is true. But beneath all of that - that chaos and destruction - there is an order. That order is a prescient message being told by original author, Chuck Palahniuk, director, David Fincher, and screenwriter, Jim Uhls.

The message deals with a perpetual character of human nature: discontentment. Discontentment with society. Discontentment with one's own life, and the limited control that one has over it. Discontentment with one's place within the world. And then the motivation to push back. Against everything.

There is a lot more going on above and below the surface of the film's plot - foremost, involving the titular fight club, and, of course, the infamous plot twist (of which, I'm sure you, by now, know it). As far as the filmmaking goes, it is pristine. Fight Club is the dangerously sharp pinnacle of David Fincher films - dark, gritty, bitingly-relevant - it was and still is the angry voice of the discontents, the anarchists, and the nihilists. It is 'Jack's wasted life'. At the time, the film was an important vocalization of fears leading into a new millennium and, still today, provides commentary on current issues such as (literal and figurative) social isolation, the materialism of western countries, the rise of incels and ongoing mass violence.

Fight Club has never been an easy watch - it challenges the viewer to re-evaluate certain staples of society. However, when a film's original author says that a film adaptation is superior - as Palahniuk has gone on record to say - people should sit down, listen, watch. And remember the rules.