by Arik Ben Treston

Fight Club
20th Century Fox, 1999

1999 was certainly not a cinematically conventional year. With films like Being John Malkovich, American Beauty, Three Kings, and Magnolia (to name but a few), it was the year of the auteur, not the usual studio-fare. It was also the year of the insomniacs.

Fight Club was one of these great films that managed to get both overlooked and misconstrued upon its release. Dismissively written off by some as a misguided anarchistic testosterone-filled ode to the woes of men and plainly misunderstood by others, Club missed its chance to become a big surreal hit. If you think the film is about men fighting in a club then you only know 11% of what this film is about. Just the fact that it is directed by David Fincher — the director of Aliens3, The Game, and Seven — tells you that you are not about to watch a ‘normal’ film.

Edward Norton is our nameless narrator who we first meet attending a self-help group. He has a horrible job (working for a major car company assessing crash data) and has trouble sleeping. Norton learns that attending these meetings and talking to people gives him the release he needs to get a good night’s sleep. There’s no end to these support groups and Norton swiftly becomes a support group junkie. In one of these groups, Norton notices Marla (Helena Bohnam Carter), a mess of a woman who, like Norton, is a ‘tourist’ in this world of emotional catharses. Enter Tyler. Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) is a fast-talking specialty soap maker who befriends Norton and introduces him to a whole new outlook on the state of our culture. Norton’s character is part of a drone workforce that drives itself so that it can keep acquiring goods, like furniture from Ikea. According to Tyler, the absence of fathers in their lives has caused an entire generation of men to become soft and weak. Tyler has plans, big plans, to make modern man strong again. (On a quick digression, during its theatrical run, one critic suggested that if Brad Pitt really felt so strongly negative about celebrity and material possessions, he should give up his super-stardom and drop out of acting. Planet Earth is on line 2 for you! You miserable *#&$. He obviously doesn’t realize that actors play a part on screen and that they don’t always believe in the same things as their characters. Moron.)

One night, Tyler asks Norton to hit him. After obliging him with a good smack, Tyler returns the favor. This leads to the two of them discovering that having a physical ‘fight’ is a real catharsis and that more men should try this. Hence ‘Fight Club’.

To further expound on the plot would do this movie a great disservice. The pleasure of the film is derived from the unexpected and unusual events that develop and the people we meet along the way.

Fincher sets up a techno-paced (which even at almost two-and-a-half hours seems to fly by) movie that keeps building on the strange factor. Using various film techniques (never to a real distraction, though), and styles, Fincher blankets the movie with a cock-eyed slant that suits the story and characters to a ‘t’.

Mumford
Touchstone Home Video, 1999

On the lighter side of the spectrum, filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan (Big Chill, Silverado and The Accidental Tourist among others) gave us a wonderful film last year that unfortunately flew well below the publicity radar. Mumford is a sweet, character-driven comedy that flows gently and quietly, never breaking its correctly calm tone. What propels this film is the actors, especially Loren Dean (Gattaca) as Doctor Mumford and Hope Davis (Next Stop, Wonderland) as his patient, Sofie. Dr. Mumford is a newly arrived therapist to the town of Mumford (no relation). In a short time, he has managed to amass a roster of patients larger than the town’s two other psychiatrists combined. (This causes a town lawyer, Martin Short, to become angry and suspicious of the good doctor, especially after the doctor declines to treat him.)

Dr. Mumford has a relaxed way with his patients. He treats [most of] them without getting technical about psychiatric theories or Freudian mumbo-jumbo and instead just ‘talks’ to them. In his short time in Mumford, Dr. M. befriends a self-made billionaire (Jason Lee) and his wise neighbor (Alfre Woodard), among other strange characters. When Sofie (Davis) decides to go to Mumford for therapy to help her with her insomnia, the two begin to feel a connection. While some of the characters never truly flesh out into a three-dimensional figure, they serve their purpose as comic foils for our hero.

If all of this sounds dull, it isn’t. There are certain plots and twists that are more fun if you don’t see them coming (although if you saw and remember the trailer, or read some of the reviews of the film, you probably know what the main twist is). While neither fast-paced nor guffaw-inducing, the movie entertains as it lets you into this strange little town where the people are friendly, the emotions are wild and the mental-stability is questionable. (But always fun to watch.)