Well, this set of movies has been begging for review since the concept of review was invented, or since each of these movies came out -- whichever came last.
Or maybe reviewers willed these movies into being just so they'd have something awesome to review.
Fight Club was listed in all relevant sources and in out-of-my-mouth recitations as "my favorite movie" for several years. That doesn't mean I liked it the first time I saw it.
In fact, it took a thorough knowledge of the worst graphically violent scenes in the movie, and my studiously avoiding watching those scenes (though I did listen with my eyes averted) to get Fight Club to my-fave-movie status. There is an at-best uncomfortable level of violence in this movie.
But that's the point, or part of it, which saves it from being gratuitous, I think.
Of course, anyone can claim that their overly violent film is "about gratuitous violence" and then cram in so much of it that the Saw series looks tame by comparison (though from what I've heard about the Saws, I'm not sure that anything short of a legitimate snuff film involving four kinds of power tools and an entire Equestrian Club could do this). But Fight Club isn't American Psycho (also worth watching in its way if you can stomach Christian Bale, chainsaws and very foul language).
Fight Club is art. And it's exactly the kind of art I love a movie to be: It's art that knows it's art.
Self-referential and self-aware without being self-conscious --that's the genius of putting Brad Pitt in this film, who likely couldn't play self-conscious on the most self-conscious day of his life with an electrified insecurity machine -- Fight Club the movie is in part about film; in part about modern-day masculinity; in part about consumerism; in part about personal demons and the exploration of their exorcism.
David Fincher, my since-Fight-Club favorite director, plays with film. Brad Pitt points out "cigarette burns" that show when the reel is going to change, and they actually do signify the change in the theater, where you're watching the film; this is happening as Edward Norton is speaking directly to the camera and Brad is splicing single cells of porn into campy children's movies.
Cut to the audience watching the cat and dog learn to get along in the animated feature they're watching in the theater -- see their reactions as they see, but don't consciously recognize, the single cell of pornography -- feel the illicit thrill of knowing what those unsuspecting audience members have seen.
But later, realize that you've been in the theater, watching a movie that wasn't a Disney flick, but that also contained a single cell of pornography.
The only difference between you and that audience is that you likely knew what you were in for when you went to see Fight Club; and you get the pleasure of dramatic irony, seeing them upset while you are feeling gratified by being let in on the secret.
Dramatic irony is half the thrill of Fight Club. The second viewing is better than the first.
And I think I'm qualified to say the seventh viewing is better than that.
There's a well-known twist to the ending of Fight Club, but for those who may still not have seen it and are being convinced by my review, I won't spoil it here. (And please don't spoil it in any comments, the two of you reading.)
But the twist is not the greatness of the movie, and if you watch it repeatedly trying to figure out how every jot and tittle align, you'll get bored or frustrated or both, eventually.
Similarly, if you watch it looking for answers, like people who watch The Simpsons to get the moral at the end of the story, you'll be disappointed.
Fight Club, like most art, or at least most postmodern art that works, asks questions and explores them. It doesn't definitively answer them.
In fact, it's just as important to recognize what Fight Club is not about as what it is about. It's not about women; it's not about creating a comprehensive new world order; it's not a solution to capitalism or human malaise or ennui or American over-consumption; it's not actually about fighting. Anyone looking to get boxing tips from this movie will be disappointed. And it's not a morality play.
But playing with morality is a worthwhile pursuit of art, particularly self-aware art that forces the question back on the viewer -- and Fight Club does that very, very well.
*****
Battle Royale, the Japanese version, is the only movie I've ever started and shut off multiple times.
Other movies I typically give about half an hour, and if I have to shut them off, they usually stay off permanently. But in general, particularly thanks to my childhood of Saturday afternoon WTXX horror movies, I finish even the worst of what's put in front of me.
Battle Royale, or the first seven minutes of it, though, just plain freaked me out.
Before the melodrama of the rest of the movie, which I eventually watched with the support of Spencer as fellow viewer, and which is ridiculous, the camera introduces us to an ordinary- looking Japanese young boy in a normal school uniform. He goes home on a typical day. And finds his father hanging from the ceiling by an extension cord, in their apartment.
His father had committed suicide. We don't see the violence of the act or even the body, except for the swinging feet. We do see the boy's reaction: the drop to his knees, hands to his face. This is all tamped further down into chillingly uncanny by the boy's voiceover explaining his father's death.
Cut to a passle of press people crowding around a descending helicopter. The door opens and a frantic anchorwoman, hair flying about her head, takes us up to it. Inside sits a little girl, clutching a stuffed animal, and covered in blood. She smiles broadly, teeth showing.
This was the point where I'd shut off the movie.
Turns out I didn't need to, though; as with the first Scream, the first ten minutes is the only part that could possibly be considered scary. The rest is a melodramatic morality tale -- or would be if a Westerner could understand what the moral was.
The premise is that the world is overcrowded. To deal with this problem, a new game show has developed in which classes of students are chosen to participate in a "battle royale": They're required to fight to the death until only one of them remains. The class chosen is fitted with collars that will cause their heads to explode if they try to leave the island they're on, or if they are in danger zones at certain times of day -- the zones will be announced over loudspeakers, and presumably are meant to herd the remaining kids in toward each other to make the killing easier, though they appear to be randomly selected. The kids have some time to get out of the zones, but that doesn't prevent at least one kid's head from getting exploded.
The special effects in this movie are similar to those used in Shogun when the samurai gets his head cut off: That is, they're practically nonexistent. Spurting blood is theatrical, to match the melodramatic speeches impassioned pre-teens give each other while sacrificing themselves (or a classmate) to the necessities of the game. The movie quickly becomes a parody of itself.
There's nothing wrong with a parody, even one in which a lot of kids get killed. It would probably be more worthwhile, though, if less attention was paid to how the kids die, which is depicted in exhaustive and exhausting detail (I mean, there are so many of them), and more to why they're dying.
The horror seems to be self-evident, or at least the director thinks so, or at least in a such a way that Japanese could understand. It may be a classic horror film. I won't dispute this, because I don't know much about Japanese culture, which in general (and as a person who's lived in China) confuses and alarms me. But to me, the movie leaves the valley of the uncanny far behind with the first glimpse of the "winner" of the competition, clutching her stuffed animal in that helicopter, and enters some other valley. (The "Valley of Interesting Ways To Be Decapitated," perhaps.)
So watch it for the thrill of the macabre in the first ten minutes, and the thrill of camp melodrama thereafter.
And once you've gotten all the nourishment you can from that, there's only one thing left to do when watching a foreign-language film.
Ignore the subtitles and make up your own dialogue.
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