Apropos of nothing, I watch the film Fight Club for the second time since it came out. This time, I view it with knowledge of the big plot twist, so it really is a different film. The twist itself is utterly ridiculous and doesn’t bear close inspection, but then one could say that about the entire film. It doesn’t matter, because the ideas themselves are so brilliant and original, thinking one step ahead all the time, that whether or not they could happen in real life is entirely by-the-by. You just sit in awe of all the dazzling ideas and aphoristic wit. Wit of a rather different stripe than Oscar Wilde, certainly, but wit all the same. It’s a film that’s entirely high on its own world.
It’s also a brilliant adaptation of the Chuck Palahnuik novel: the director Mr Fincher takes his murky, jittery Seven palette and paints the novel onto the screen, happily ignoring the popular film-making tip about never using a narrator. I think Mr P has said he takes a shop window-dressing approach to writing novels. You stuff the story with as many ideas as possible, with no padding. The more over-the-top, the better. He’s not to everyone’s taste, but I admire the way he writes. It’s as if he’s constantly terrified of the reader giving up and reading someone else’s work. You imagine a Chuck Palahnuik book that’s just been put down shouting “No! Wait! Come back! How DARE you!”
The opening idea in Fight Club of someone perfectly healthy attending support meetings for the terminally ill, out of a need to feel grateful for living, and then meeting a woman who’s doing the same, is enough in itself for many lesser writers and directors. That Fight Club then fidgets and ploughs onto further ideas while the previous one is stilll sinking in, is all part of its brilliance.
I mentioned here the other day how much I get upset at any show of aggression in public, and here I am celebrating a film that’s rather full of aggression. Well, that’s they way I like it. In its place, in inspired and imaginative stories. Fight Club is as much a glittering fantasy as Lord Of The Rings.
A news story I rather enjoy, if only because of the closing quote (source: pinknews.co.uk):
The songwriter-cum born-again preacher George Hargreaves has accused the “pink press” of peddling hatred of Christians. Mr Hargreaves is standing as a candidate for his Scottish Christian Party in the Scottish parliamentary elections on May 3rd.
“This is not about gay rights, it’s about gay wrongs,” he told The Times. Mr Hargreaves has funded the SCP with royalties he continues to receive for co-writing and producing the 1980s anthem So Macho, sung by gay icon Sinitta… He defended the thousands of pounds he continues to earn every month from the hit song.
“It says in the Bible that so long as Earth remains there shall be seed time and harvest. You could say that So Macho was the seed I sowed and now I’m reaping the harvest,” he said.
