Fight Club (1999)
Directed by David Fincher
A ticking-time-bomb insomniac and a slippery soap salesman channel primal male aggression into a shocking new form of therapy. Their concept catches on, with underground "fight clubs" forming in every town, until an eccentric gets in the way and ignites an out-of-control spiral toward oblivion.
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What critics say influenced Fight Club
“It reminded me of The Graduate ,” he says.
The film has been compared with coming-of-age tale, The Graduate , for the reason that it portrays a man with no future and no idea what to do with his life.
This story has a lot more in common with The Graduate than it does with The Matrix.
It’s a coming-of-age stratagem that fits perfectly within Fincher’s previous films and taps into films like "Taxi Driver," "The Graduate," and "A Clockwork Orange."
Ecranizare a romanului omonim semnat de scriitorul american Chuck Palahniuk si publicat in anul 1996, Fight Club a fost comparat in istoria cinematografie cu Rebel Without a Cause (1955) si The Graduate (1967).
Trivia: Some of fake names used by the narrator in the self-help groups are taken from “Planet of the Apes” (Cornelius), as well as classic roles played by Robert De Niro (such as Rupert from “The King of Comedy” and Travis from “Taxi Driver”).
Men, in other words, feel exactly the way the picture says they feel, meaning really only that Freud was right all along while drawing a nice line in the process to spiritual cousin Taxi Driver .
But some feel "Bringing Out the Dead" dilutes Scorsese's stylistic brilliance with too much of the ambiguous philosophizing of screenwriter Paul Schrader ("Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," "Affliction").
It's a sort of twisted amalgamation of Lord of the Flies and Taxi Driver and other stories whose mere mention would give away too much.
Like the various epiphanies that Travis has in Taxi Driver or Max in Rushmore.
The film bears an obvious resemblance to Taxi Driver.
In this respect the film reminded me of Nicolas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause ?
It's Rebel Without a Cause for the fins-de-sicles, sharing many of the same strengths, and most of the weaknesses, of Nicholas Ray's ultimately populist classic.
It speaks to the disaffected and disillusioned like no other film I have seen, my generation's Rebel Without A Cause .
Ecranizare a romanului omonim semnat de scriitorul american Chuck Palahniuk si publicat in anul 1996, Fight Club a fost comparat in istoria cinematografie cu Rebel Without a Cause (1955) si The Graduate (1967).
Since Fincher wastes his chances to give Norton a character arc, or to make some sort of point on violence (unlike Oliver Stone's profound 1994 satire, "Natural Born Killers"), the only recognizable meaning to get out of the film is, like I've already mentioned, almost identical to that of "American Beauty," minus the underlying themes and three-dimensional characters.
Fast-forward past The Game, another moody, Michael Douglas mystery, and one finds Finchers Fight Club, easily the most overstuffed, self-important wad of hooey to gush from the pretentious pipe since Oliver Stone unleashed his occasionally brilliant, but mostly goofy, Natural Born Killers.
In the future, we’ll probably see all manner of society’s ills blamed on this movie, just as others have blamed society’s corruption on Oliver Stone for Natural Born Killers .
”This is the part of the interview where you ask who the hell do I think I am and what the hell do I think I’m doing,” correctly observes the 37-year-old director of what could turn out to be the most controversial release from a major studio since Natural Born Killers .
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In his first truly visceral role, Pitt is the heir to Malcolm McDowell's misfit in Stanley Kubrick's masterful "A Clockwork Orange," while Edward Norton, marvelous in a variety of roles from a white supremacist in Tony Kaye's "American History X" to a charming romantic in Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You," inhabits the dark role of a malcontent with astonishing depth.
It's not a ballet like Sam Peckinpaw ("The Wild Bunch") or a comedic choreography like Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange".
Yes, some of the violence is harsh -- similar to Kubrickís A Clockwork Orange -- and critics were quick to bash this film for its violent content.
Fincher wants Fight Club to be a transgressive, loony pop artifact on the level of A Clockwork Orange and Natural Born Killers; he wants to make, in Tyler's words, a beautiful and unique snowflake.
With its kinetic style, visceral approach, compelling storyline, and powerful social message, Fight Club makes a commanding case to be considered the '90s version of A Clockwork Orange.
What you get with Fight Club is A Clockwork Orange on crank.
While watching the mayhem Tyler and his apprentices cause, Jack becomes increasingly disturbed by the mindlessness of the followers, that are highly reminiscent of Orwell’s "1984" predictions, and the increasingly violent acts they pursue.
Trivia: Some of fake names used by the narrator in the self-help groups are taken from “Planet of the Apes” (Cornelius), as well as classic roles played by Robert De Niro (such as Rupert from “The King of Comedy” and Travis from “Taxi Driver”).
La critique, à de rares exception près, ne sera pas sensible à la vision de Fincher mais la jeunesse fera un triomphe au film - un échec aux Etats-Unis mais un succès relatif dans le monde dont un million d’entrée en France, mais par contre un carton historique en DVD - et l’érigera au rang culte sans doute pour de mauvaises raisons dans un premier temps - le fameux syndrome du Scarface de Brian De Palma (1984).
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Pitt aber war für Fincher sowieso nur zweite Wahl: Sean Penn , der altgediente Method Actor aus " Der schmale Grat ", war zunächst für die Rolle vorgesehen - doch Penn verzichtete zu Gunsten seines ersten eigenen Regieprojekts.Fincher (" The Game ") ist ein geschliffener Stylist, und "Fight Club" ohne Zweifel sein bis dato aufwendigster Film - auch wenn die hier zur Schau getragene Komplexität in Wirklichkeit nur aufgesetzt und die gebotene Sozialkritik nicht neu, sondern ein Abklatsch dessen ist, was vor bald 35 Jahren Marlon Brando alias Johnny in dem Klassiker " The wild One " von sich gab: Gegen wen und was er denn nun eigentlich rebelliere, wird Johnny da gefragt.
"Fight Club's" wrestling and bare-fisted cold-cocking owe more in their visceral matter-of-factness to the quiet, but awful violence in John Huston 's "Fat City," a film about fighting's futility, whose dark, somber interiors Fincher and production designer / underworld-specialist Alex McDowell have hyperbolized into a tragic kingdom that looks like New York and L.A. in a storm cloud.