Fight Club
(1999)
Director:
David Fincher
Produced by:
Art Linson,
Ceán Chaffin & Ross Grayson Bell
Screenplay by:
Jim Uhls
Based on “Fight Club”
by Chuck Palahniuk
The Film’s Successes,
Contribution to Cinema & Legacy
One of the most “cult movie(s) of our time” as titled by the New York Times in 2009.
Commercially and critically, the film was a success on home video release after it originally received a mixed reception and a lower than expected box-office result on theatrical release. It went on to become a cult classic and one of the most controversial and most talked-about films of 1999.
Critical reviews for the film were incredibly mixed on release, with the source of its combined love and hate being for how, as the The Times reported, “it touched a nerve in the male psyche” and yet equally, as Christopher Goodwin of The Australian wrote, it ended up “shaping up to be the most contentious mainstream Hollywood meditation on violence since Stanley’ Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.”
Critically it was mainly praised for its direction, story, performances, visuals and editing with The New York Times’ Janet Maslin writing that the film carried a message of “contemporary manhood” which “if not watched closely… could be misconstrued as an endorsement of violence and nihilism”, but still, as Gary Crowdus for Cineaste reviewed it, it was a strong visual and social statement which led many to “hail it as one of the most exciting, original and thought-provoking films of the year.”
The film is popularly considered to be the leader in a new mood in American political life and an innovator in cinematic form and style much like films such as Magnolia or Being John Malkovich and primarily due to its new developments in filmmaking technology.
“The Greatest Film of Our Lifetime” as voted in Total Film magazine’s 10th anniversary, #8 in Empire’s 2004 list of Greatest Films of All Time and #10 in their 2008 issue “The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time”.
Today, it stands on Rotten Tomatoes at 79% with a critical consensus which reads “Solid acting, amazing direction and elaborate production design make Fight Club a wild ride.”