Pitt's newest disturbs, transports film viewer

"Fight Club"

Directed by: David Fincher

Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, Meat Loaf

Rated: R

Every once in a while a piece of art comes along that transcends its style, genre, medium and very classification.

When I see the Mona Lisa, I don't think of it as a painting, I think of it as "the Mona Lisa."

The same goes for Van Morrison's album "Astral Weeks." Since it is just a collection of a dozen or so songs, done by a rock artist, one might assume that it's just another album in some singer's career.

It may well be, but it's a whole lot more. It stretches the boundaries of perception enough to make the listener reconsider what he expects from a typical collection of songs and challenges the very genre in which it exists.

Joseph Heller's book, "Catch-22," does the same thing. Its simple, seductive opening line, "It was love at first sight," doesn't seem all that eloquent at first, but after reading the entire novel, you will look back and not only smile, but nod knowingly.

David Fincher's new film, "Fight Club" falls in the same boat. It stretches the boundaries of the medium while making us think about things we might not be comfortable thinking about.

It really took me to places I've never been before and didn't necessarily want to go now and left me feeling quite uneasy for many days after.

I think I said the same thing about Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut," but this film is even more unsettling in a lot of ways.

Hometown superstar Brad Pitt has been getting all of the attention here and he's great, but second billed Edward Norton is the guy the film really revolves around. His unnamed narrator tells the entire intricate story and ends up as the tragic everyman hero who makes us take a hard look at our lives and priorities.

Norton's character is a typical stressed out yuppie with a thankless job and not much of a social life.

As the film opens, we see him stretching out a little bit, but in a rather unusual way. He's attending every manner of self-help support group he can find, none of which have a thing to do with his own problems. These become his passion and he finds he no longer suffers from insomnia.

What screws the whole deal up is when he notices someone else, a woman named Marla, is playing the same game as he. She's another tourist, just like he is, and is merely getting vicarious relief. While this threatens him greatly, the two start up an uneasy friendship and eventual love affair.

The groups are becoming less and less satisfying, but one night our narrator meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt's character) and his life takes a dramatic turn.

The two devise a little game of beating the holy heck out of each other and soon find a number of other emotionally unsatisfied males to join their fight club. The motivation behind this rather masochistic need is what gives the film its unsettling heart.

Here is a group of young professional men who are so out of touch with themselves and their place in the world that the only way they can be validated is by beating, or being beaten by, someone just like themselves.

Fincher's direction is as dark as ever (he did "Alien 3" and "Seven" the guy knows how to do a dark, disturbing film) and there were a number of times I had to look away from the screen. Unsettling is the only word that comes to mind.

Norton's character loses his apartment in a mysterious fire and moves in with Durden.

Marla, the woman from the support groups, shows back up, but begins having a relationship with Tyler.

At the beginning of the third act we're hit with a plot twist I never saw coming, leading to my biggest caveat for this film: Don't miss a single frame. If you run out for popcorn or the restroom, you might miss an all-important scene, come back and wonder just what in the world is going on.

To say I enjoyed "Fight Club" wouldn't quite be correct, but I am thoroughly in awe of its unique story and Fincher's original approach at directing.

The best way I can describe it is as a cross between "A Clockwork Orange" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Disturbing companions, I'll admit, but not exactly bad company.

It's an important film and one that, along with "American Beauty," will go down as one of the best things to happen to the movies in 1999.

(Jim Wunderle works at Associated Video Producers and is a Springfield free-lance writer and musician.)