'Fight Club' dissects the primal nature of men

The role of the male in our society and culture has come under tremendous scrutiny lately. There has been a cover story in Harper's, a book called "Stiffed: The Politics of Confrontation" by feminist Susan Faludi, and pieces printed in Newsweek and other magazines and newspapers that dare to trespass into that forbidden zone of the physical, primal and primitive world of noble savages called men; traits that have, according to these authors, slowly been wrung from the masculine gender.

Edward Norton (left) and Brad Pitt explore men's primal needs in "Fight Club."

"Fight Club" brilliantly explores this secret territory. It assaults us with violence, brutality, sexual confusion and anarchy and has enough bruising, punishing humor to keep us laughing with relief. In this initially ultra-civilized realm of corporate conformity and control, the film's narrator, played by Edward Norton, is introduced. He calls his existence "oblivion, dark and silent and deep." Chuck Palahniuk, upon whose novel the film is based, is quoted as saying "we've become a nation of physical animals who have forgotten how much we enjoy being that."

Director David Fincher ("Alien 3," "Seven"), with his dark, brooding eye, revels and lolls in that covert netherworld that boasts "it's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

The narrator, an insomniac chained to his job, finds that in order to sleep, he must expose himself to those who are in worse shape than he is. He does this by voluntarily attending support groups for guys with testicular cancer, alcoholics and addicts of every kind.

MOVIE REVIEW
Fight Club. Directed by David Fincher. Written by Jim Uhls. Cast: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter. 20th Century Fox. Bella Bottega, Cinema 17, Crossroads, East Valley, Everett Mall 1-3, Factoria, Galleria 11, Gateway Center, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kent 6, Lewis & Clark, Meridian 16, Metro, Oak Tree, Woodinville 12. 145 minutes. Rated R for violence, language, sexual content. Grade: A-

Until he meets the charismatic Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on one of his many job-related "single-serving member" flights. Tyler allows his new friend to move in after the narrator's beloved Ikea-shrine of a condominium is mysteriously blown to bits by arson. Relocating provokes spectacular changes in this mild-mannered, diligent worker ant. With Tyler as his guide -- and Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), a "tourist" he met at his addict groups as his antagonistic sexual itch ("If I had a tumor," he says, "I would name it Marla"), the Fight Club is birthed. It's a place for men to choreograph and perform their most elegant, bloody and private ballet ("First rule of Fight Club is don't talk about Fight Club.").

"Fight Club" is a difficult film to describe because it has layers of conscious and unconscious sedition beneath its gritty, elegantly dirty surface. It's a dangerously seductive and subversive work that, in its messianic intensity and insanity, speaks volumes about the way we live, the material things we think will make us happy and the denial of our baser instincts that ultimately cripples us and makes us ill.

"Fight Club" confirms Edward Norton's ascent into the pantheon of actors like Robert DeNiro and Robert Duvall. He is not only lithe, agile, accessible and volatile, he disappears into his characters and makes them both scary and sympathetic. While Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter ignite onscreen as well, it's Norton's movie all the way. He gambles everything to inhabit a character who is ignorant of his real nature and who must find balance between his split selves or self-destruct.

His nameless narrator moves into enlightenment through sadism and pain, and in the crazy world that defines "Fight Club," he speaks not only for the men who have been emasculated by rules made generations before, but for all people lost in the mayhem and chaos of 20th-century urban life and debt.