MY MOVIE SHELF: Fight Club

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 266 Days to go: 260

Movie #111: Fight Club

There’s something oddly fitting about me watching Fight Club, a movie that starts off about insomnia, in the middle of the night unable to sleep. Sometimes things happen to come together at just the right moment, and they coalesce. That’s certainly the case with Fight Club anyway. Fight Club is a story of dualities, of dual identities, and when I talk about Fight Club, I need to separate how Fight Club works as a film from how Fight Club works as a philosophy.

“I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.”

As a film, Fight Club is superb. The characters are compelling and well-acted. The story is suspenseful and gripping. The direction by David Fincher is just as intense and visually striking as people have come to expect a Fincher film to be. The writing is tight, the dialogue is memorable and the structure is such that the twist is not obvious but clues are evident along the way — so much so that the film loses none of its cachet upon repeated viewings. It is perhaps even more satisfying to watch it after knowing its secret, because then you get the satisfaction of cataloging all its hidden gems. And its ending is shocking and awful and fantastic.

“I am Jack’s smirking revenge.”

As a philosophy, however, Fight Club is tiresome. It’s the culmination of a whole bunch of white males disaffected with their privilege, wreaking havoc in their lives because they’re dissatisfied with their jobs and the kind of furniture they have. They can’t sleep, they can’t feel. They have nothing but disdain for the world that they live in, the world they created, so they lash out with violence and hostility and anger. Instead of being productive members of society, they are destructive, and they couch it all as an expression of their freedom, of taking back their identities. They will blackmail and intimidate and assault and terrorize others in order to get their way, to feel “manly.” No matter how powerful these men are in their minds, in reality they are pathetic and sad and cowardly. In that sense, they are hardly men at all.

“I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection.”

Edward Norton plays our narrator, and he is the embodiment of these pathetic men who cling to the philosophy of Fight Club. He stops caring about his appearance, about work, in society, and in not caring, he gains power over these things he was once powerless against. He starts Fight Club to release all his aggression and anger for a life he feels has somehow failed him, onto some other nameless stranger in a crowd. Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt, in his most beautifully ripped physique) represents all our narrator (and the rest of the Fight Club members) aspire to be. He is bold and untethered to society. He is revolutionary in both thought and action. He doesn’t dress the way these men are expected to dress. He doesn’t kowtow to authority or say the things these men are expected to say. He’s the fantasy image of free-thinking, self-made, independent masculinity. He’s, quite literally, too perfect of a subversive role model to be true, but that doesn’t stop all sorts of miserable losers (played by everyone from Meatloaf to Jared Leto to that guy who plays Pinocchio on Once Upon a Time) from buying into his bullshit.

“I am Jack’s broken heart.”

Unsurprisingly, in a film all about the desperate attempts of a man (or several men) to retake their masculinity, the one female role is more as that of an object than a human being, but Helena Bonham Carter plays Marla Singer beautifully. She’s maybe crazy, but mainly due to being broken emotionally and to being manipulated by Tyler. She’s revolutionary in her own right, so she becomes both an object of scorn and a point of fascination. She is vulnerable and needy at times, but it doesn’t stop her from getting angry and standing up for herself when slighted. For a role that could easily have been mishandled and diminished in lesser hands, Carter injects Marla with life and spirit and individuality, and it’s easy to see why the narrator would be repulsed by her, drawn to her, and ultimately protective and affectionate toward her. And for me, she’s the one element that makes the film really worthwhile, and worthy of multiple viewings. She’s the element that, in her own way, both embraces and rejects Fight Club‘s philosophy and makes it a better overall film than the sum of its parts.

“You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

Strictly speaking, though, I really shouldn’t be talking about any of this at all. It’s against the rules.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 295 + 4 (I’ve started receiving additions from other people now) = 299  Days to go: 284

Movie #78: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

A lot of people scoff at Benjamin Button, at least in my experience, but I think it’s a beautiful film. In every way. Directed by David Fincher, it bears his signature richness and depth of color, of striking images. And yet it’s unlike anything else he’s ever directed in its utter stillness and lack of tension. Like water lapping easily against the shore for centuries, it feels peaceful in the moment and then you step back and realize how great an impact that water has had. That’s how it is for me, at least, watching this movie of singular, ethereal beauty, of love and of life and of the things that stick with you, when suddenly I find myself crying at the end as Daisy (Cate Blanchett) holds that young baby in her arms, 85 years after Benjamin was born.

Based on the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button tells the story of a clock that was installed in New Orleans at the end of WWI and was made to run backwards so that maybe time would reverse and the boys lost to war might return home to live their lives. And by a bit of mysterious magic, Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) was born the night the war ended, and though he was small like a baby, he was born old — with cataracts and arthritis and all sorts of ailments of the elderly. As time passes, Benjamin gradually gets younger in body and older in mind. His life follows these two paths at once, through war, through friendship, through deaths and births and through the love he holds his whole life for Daisy.

Pitt is a chameleon, fully inhabiting the bodies of men young and old. His slow, settled way of being fits Benjamin well, and he embraces the role in such a way that it’s easy to see Benjamin as one who has accepted who and what he is and is simply experiencing life as it comes, with no expectations or regrets. His mother Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who raised him from the moment he was left on her back porch stairs, instilled him with love and faith and the knowledge that “You never know what’s coming.”

It’s a theme the movie holds to, encouraging us all to live our best lives and if we aren’t, “to have the strength to start all over again.” Benjamin seems to live so many lives inside his one. He grew up in the old folks’ home where Queenie lived and worked, and despite his apparent age, was always up for learning new things. He worked on a tugboat, went to war, restored a motorcycle, learned to sail, had a family and traveled the world. As every unfamiliar experience presented itself, Benjamin simply rode the tide along, accepting where it took him and knowing it would eventually lead him where he wanted to be — back with Daisy.

Blanchett is a vision herself in the film, going from a young, lithe spirited dancer to an older, wiser, wearier woman. She, too, lives many different lives, from dancer to lover to mother to caregiver, and while the movie urges its characters and audience to change their lives as they see fit after Benjamin leaves Daisy, the most encouraging part I find is that Daisy and Benjamin, having loved and longed for one another almost their whole lives, did not actually realize their great and epic romance — did not achieve it — until Benjamin was 44 and Daisy was 38. Having loved and lost and loved again, and having started over once or twice myself, I find their long-delayed relationship to be a testament to one’s life never being over until it’s over. There’s always something new around the corner.

Tilda Swinton’s character, Elizabeth Abbot, is a prime example of this. She was a failed swimmer in her youth who in her sixties managed to swim the English Channel. You never know what’s possible until you try. Or take the movie’s backdrop, the imminent landfall of Hurricane Katrina as Daisy’s daughter Caroline (Juliette Binoche) reads Benjamin’s old diary to her. Katrina is a powerful real-world symbol of having to rebuild everything after whatever disasters befall us. You never know what’s coming.

I turned 30 not long after my first marriage had blown up and I’d just started living on my own again in an awful, tiny sublet. I was working again for the first time in two years, having stayed home after the birth of my son, and I had nothing to speak of. I remember feeling very lost and very much like I had missed any chance I’d had at being someone or at finding love again or at anything, really. My whole life felt like a massive failure, and I didn’t know how I’d get on. My salvation came to me in pieces as I realized, through a couple of highly unlikely sources, how much more time and how many more opportunities lay ahead of me if only I open my eyes to them.

My son was definitely a motivator, as I had no intention of failing him like I felt I’d failed myself, but the places I learned to find value in myself were much more out of the ordinary. One, was, of all things, Sex and the City, which I’d never watched during its original run because I hadn’t had HBO, but when I moved into that sublet the first thing I did was subscribe to Netflix and put that series on my queue. In one episode, Miranda is making a list of her past lovers and her number wound up in the thirties. I was shocked at first, because when I was in college it was generally agreed (never overtly but always in a sort of unspoken prudence) that a woman’s number could be as high as seven or eight, perhaps — total throughout her lifetime — but never really more than that. Well here I was 30 years old and getting divorced and my number was already higher than I would’ve liked. It seems silly to look back on that now and remember how upset I was at the prospect of my number needing to increase in order for me to ever find love again, but I was quite upset indeed. It weighed on me. So Miranda’s number shocked me at first, and then I realized that the character was an unmarried woman in her thirties, and that even if she’d had two months-long monogamous relationships each year for the past fifteen years, she’d be at thirty. And suddenly it didn’t seem like such a high or unreasonable number. Suddenly I realized that the number itself was irrelevant, and that only the nature of your relationships really mattered.

The other was the website Television Without Pity, which I’ve written here before about how it introduced me to a whole world of people who cared about the types of things I cared about and where I encountered one woman in particular who inspired me then (and still inspires me now) to be better and smarter and stronger and more confident in myself every single day. I think I thank her for that at least once a year, though I’m sure she still doesn’t quite understand the magnitude of my appreciation.

So, you see, second chances and second lives can come from anywhere, at any time. Even a movie like Benjamin Button, who some find heavy-handed or trite, can be the source of inspiration. It’s not something I watch a lot — the movie is long and densely packed with Benjamin’s adventures — but it’s a film that moves me to tears every time, that reminds me every time that my life isn’t over, that my opportunities are still out there. You never know what’s coming.