Fight Club: 10th Anniversary Edition | Blu-ray, Action, Jacquie Kubin reviews | DONNE TEMPO
Fight Club: 10th Anniversary Edition
And on Blu Ray, it is beautiful.
Fight Club recounts the life of a generally dissatisfied thirty-something single man who lives without meaningful purpose.
His life is nothing more than corporate acquiescence that has him on planes, unable to create meaningful personal relationships.
Life at home is a high-rise condo filled with Ikea planned rooms. HIs relationship icons are the “single” sized packets that represent the interpersonal engagements forged and ended between take off and landing
For those who have not see the picture, it is a narrated journey into the self-loathing nihilistic tendencies of a character never address by name in the film, so he is just called “Jack.”
As in “I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection,” just one of the many great quotes from the film. The film is narrated in first person, by Jack. It is about Jack and how his life changes when he realizes he just won’t take it anymore.
The movie would not have been possible post September 11, 2001, but it was originally released in 1999. Wherein critics quickly panned it,
A fact that is gleefully pointed out by actors Ed Norton (narrator/Jack) and Brad Pitt (Tyler Durden) when accepting a Spike TV award - just one of the extra clips on the Blu-ray disc.
Just for fun, those critics included Rex Reed, in The New York Observer who called it “A film without a single redeeming quality, which may have to find its audience in hell.” While Rosie O’Donnell begged viewers not to see it and then gave away the movie’s twist.
And oh what a twist it is. It is still surprising, as even if you have seen the film before, it is easy to get lost in the telling forgetting the endings double dip.
Celebrating its 10th Anniversary with the Blu Ray release, Fight Club is nothing less than an action-genre-busting cult classic film celebrating the odder side of the cathartic effect that machismos can have on men disenfranchised by the lives they lead.
It is a film that only gets better with each and every viewing.
The movie offers a satirical spin on the disillusionment of young people who, as Tyler states while lounging in the bath, are left with far less happiness than they expected:
Tyler Durden: My dad never went to college, so it was real important that I go.
Narrator: Sounds familiar.
Tyler Durden: So I graduate, I call him up long distance, I say "Dad, now what?" He says, "Get a job."
Narrator: Same here.
Tyler Durden: Now I'm 25, make my yearly call again. I say Dad, "Now what?" He says, "I don't know, get married."
Narrator: I can't get married; I'm a 30-year-old boy.
Tyler Durden: We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.
Helena Bonham Carter whose beauty is particularly striking in this film beautifully portrays the “fairer” sex in the role of Marla. Jack described Marla as the “the little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would heal if you could only stop tonguing it, but you can’t.”
The role could have been written for her. Marla is chaos.
Carter so lovingly crafts her character that the audience alternately despises and loves her for her failures. When the “twist” reveals at the films end, we wonder if we could not have seen it coming, if, just if, we would have seen the film’s reality through her eyes.
While her face is that of a 1920’s silent screen star, her crazed hair pulled into a non-productive child-like top-knot and thrift-store wardrobe speaks of the barely under the surface self-doubt that weakens a damaged soul beneath a fragile emotional exoskeleton. She seems to be in a state of perpetual suicide.
Cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth captures the razor sharp angels of Marla’s face, softening her stark intensity ever so slightly, while creating a film whose negative dark spaces are as brilliant as the flames that burn brightly.
The film weaves our hapless narrator and Tyler Durden through their quest for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of a self-empowered rainbow. They find it by creating “fight clubs” where the initial goal was to beat each other up in order to feel the adrenaline rush that would release their inner id. However the course of the film leads to the development of a nationwide Para-military type operation bent on mischief, mayhem and the beautiful inferno of destruction.
As the film progresses you wonder how far can Tyler Durden go?
How far will be too far.
Fight Club answers that question as much as it can be answered. “Jack” is able to embrace the devil within while leaving the future to the mythical paradox that is Tyler Durbin.
The Goods: The best part of this film release on Blu-ray may be the amazingly crisp image details and incredible depth of color. The definition in skin tone and texture allows the films visual brilliance to be a supporting character to film that has always been rich and rewarding. Ditto for the incredible audio and soundtrack. Masterful and impactful.
This along makes Fight Club on Blu Ray a must add to your movie collection.
In addition, the Blu Ray features the standard features we have come to expect: commentaries, the ability to change camera angels in some scenes along with seven deleted and alternate scenes (17.41).
The “Art” of the Film is a series of shorts that offers a look at the stills used for visual effects (1.25), costume and makeup design (1:50) and the development of the fictitious Paper Street house (3:05). Extra content also includes pre-production artwork and mapping of the opening credit sequence (7:00 total), music video, photo gallery and other fun things to watch.
The Mandatory Extras: There are four commentaries on the film that are repurposed from the 2000 DVD release. The first, with Fincher, Ed Norton and Brad Pitt, with comments from Helena Bonham Carter edited in. Learning that Carter’s comment are edited in explains why her contributions did not enjoy the same relaxed cadence that the “boys shared.”
Making this commentary track extra fun for me is that all these actors have been in so many great films, in the tabloids and have become so “known” it is fun to listen to them speaking from the past.
In this exchange, Pitt remains the affable joker, teasing Fincher, taking a few shots, along with Norton, at Fincher. Norton maintains a more serious tone while Fincher attempts to maintain control and explain the films progress.
The track with Palahuniak, the author of Fight Club, and Uhuls, the movie screenwriter, is very interesting, albeit casual. Listening to these writers discuss these chracters and the stories development is very engaging.
A bit more technical in tone is the track with director of photography Jeff Cronenweith, production designer Alex McDowell, FX supervisor Kevin Haug, digital animator Doc Bailey and production designer Michael Kaplan.
An interesting view for those that enjoy the behind the scenes “how-we-did-that” information.
Above and Beyond: The “I am Jack’ Search Index” presents sixty-eight searchable topics from the film.
Choose one, such as “Marla Singer,” and jump back to where she is first introduced in the film. “Director Fincher speaks of her “clog” like boots and how you could hear her coming from “three floors below.”
It is here in the film commentary that Fincher explains the subliminal, one frame “Tyler” images that we see prior to his first full appearance on screen.
“A Hit in the Ear - The Sound Design of Fight Club” features sound engineer Ren Kylce and focuses on the audio tracks of Fight Club. Not only is it fascinating to hear how he created the verdant auditory landscape of the film, but after Kylce discusses four scenes of the film, viewers have the chance to remix the audio and effects from the film and see first hand how “wound” influences the films experience.
This is fun, technical interactive audio toy that I found difficult to work on the Blu Ray player but that worked well when popped into the PlayStation 3.