Reflections on Fight Club, Crash and Bully

"Almost any assertion suggests its opposite to me, and a wide if careless reading has taught me that every enthusiasm, if genuinely embraced, turns into folly or fanaticism." -from The Beautiful Room is Empty, by Edmund White.
Fight Club is one of those interesting faliures, like Buffalo 66 (or even Lost in Translation), about urban first-world hetro male anxiety. It is such an incredibly popular film that to give a description of it is redundant. Instead, I'd like to discuss it in comparison to Crash (not to be confused with The Film Which Stole Crash's Title) and Bully, two truly brilliant, and less popular films which develop similar themes.
FIGHT CLUB
To begin with, I'll explain what I have against Fight Club. It's a fascinating film, definitely two cuts above the pack, and I have seen it many times. The images leave their hot mark on the retina, just like the acid kiss on Edward Norton's hand. The editing is sharp, the music unobtrusive, scary and appropriate. It is also very funny. It is let down mainly by its second half, and by some minor logical incongruencies (like most split-personality tales). For instance, why on earth would a man punching himself in the face outside a petrol station attract such a crowd of onlookers and inspire them to start punching each other (instead of taking him to a hospital)? This aside, Fight Club is a meaningless film. I can see the intended message, about how idealism slips into fascism and narcissism, but this doesn't strike much of a chord. It is completely overshadowed by more powerful messages beneath the surface. Beneath the simplistic PC message, Fight Club is really about the dangers of male-only society. Whether this is what it is intended to be about is beside the point. Stuck, like its author, in a closet full of half-baked macho ideas about rebellion against a vaguely defined "system", Fight Club's Scorcesean angst builds up like a pressure-cooker only to be resolved in a reassuringly heteronormative Deus ex machina. Much of Fight Club's existential-political bite is lost in a bizarre, hypnotic sea of sweaty bodies which are shown to be both beautiful and terrible, as James Baldwin might put it. These bodies are beaten even as they are idolised, as if to show that the only legitimate form of male bonding is violent sport. This of course makes the film very appealing to watch, much like The Jake Gylenhaal is Hot Movie (in fact, Fight Club could almost be called The Brad Pitt is Hot Movie). These homoerotic/phobic strains in Fight Club are much more absorbing than its wishy-washy point about mob behaviour. Unfortunately, this more interesting theme is left undeveloped, indeed stiffled (Question: is this because it is unintended? Certainly, if the homoeroticism in Fight Club was given more attention by Fincher and Palahnuik it would have been a much less popular film).
CRASH
Crash is one of my favourite films. Based on J. G. Ballard's novel, it is that rare thing: an adaptation which not only lives up to the original but is arguably even better. Ballard's book is of course brilliant in its own right, but anyone who has read it will notice that Cronenberg's film is a different story altogether. Crash is beautiful to watch. There is not a single uninteresting shot - everything is fleshy, grey, and alluring. I have heard people comment that the acting is robotic. Certainly it is underplayed, and much of the dialogue is whispered, as though the characters are speaking in a cathedral. James Spader (who gives the best performance an actor has ever given in any film ever) has a gift for blank stares. Elias Koteas is creepy and ugly but as Vaughn, he becomes a minor deity, sensualised and sexualised via his car, his shiny black leather jacket, and the mystery about his genital scars. I hear that Palahnuik was somewhat inspired by Ballard. Vaughn is twice as compelling and twice as frightening as Tyler in Fight Club. Also unlike Fight Club, Crash takes the extraordinary risk of simply replacing Morality with Aesthetics. As discussed above, Fincher flirts with this notion in his Sweaty Body scenes, but never fully embraces it. In Crash, the characters live for the thrill of their car crashes, and sexual acts involving cars. They give themselves over entirely, devoutly to this experience. What, you might ask, is the point of Crash? Crash teases you: it's about audience participation, or voyeurism to use the technical term (as in pornography, another interactive form of film). Because the subject is, on first contact, so bizzare, audiences have had trouble coming to terms with the idea that Crash is in fact a highly confrontational film. When it was first screened in Cannes, half the audience left the theatre. What is so disturbing about Crash? It isn't simply bad or mediocre. The UK tried to ban it. People are disgusted and feel personally insulted by Crash. This outrage is far more profound than simply disliking or even hating a movie: somehow Crash can't just be dismissed - it requires special comment. In his introduction, Ballard asks:
"Has the writer still the moral authority to invent a self-sufficient and self-enclosed world, to preside over his characters like an examiner, knowing all the questions in advance? Can he leave out anything he prefers not to understand, including his own motives, prejudices and psychopathology?"
This is dense stuff, and watching it unfold in movie-land is a real treat. What makes Crash so brilliant is, above all, Peter Suschitzky's cinematography. Note that Fight Club is best when the camera lingers. In Crash, the camera is always lingering, lovingly, perversely fixated on its human and machine bodies, without judging: Crash is a lesson in observation, in getting up close to the subject matter. Crash also succeeds precisely because, unlike Fight Club, it provides no easy answers. In fact, it provides no answers at all: merely fascination. All your expectations are thwarted - there are no likeable characters, there is no real story. In a truly brilliant essay on Crash ( http://www.othervoices.org/1.3/mcamblor/crash.html ) Michael Camblor describes it as "anti-film" - a total attack on the system of how we see films (and by extension the world). Crash invites us to partake of its perversity, and it is so skillfully constructed that detachment is virtually impossible (impossible, at least, without storming out of the theatre). The film rouses you into life like few others. As Camblor puts it, Crash "psychoanalyitically dismantle[s] your ego". While Fight Club, in contrast, re-enforces it. Take your pick: choose to be threatened or to be reassured. Personally, I find threats more exhilirating.

BULLY
If Crash is an exercise in anti-film, defying all film conventions (not to mention good taste) known to man, then Bully might be described as an anti-teen movie. Clark's films, like Cronenberg's, are deeply cinematographically involved in the world of the subjects. For this he has been much criticised, and being in his sixties he is often described as a "diry old man" making movies simply to satisfy his lust for teenage flesh. I'm sure there's some truth to this. As in Crash, the camera behaves exactly like Bully's lust-crazed, drugged-up, blank-minded characters. It gets involved, gets excited, aroused, tries for the best angle and goes in for a closer look. The camera is in the thick of the action, it does not observe from without. By implication we, the audience, are also in the thick of it.
One of Bully's most controversial moments is the "gratuitous" shot of actress Bijou Philips' crotch. It is one thing to watch a point of view shot of a crotch, followed by a shot of some drooling character whom we can all laugh at from the safety of the world outside the film - it is quite another to have a shot of a crotch thrust at us, given to us to behold, from the point of view of no one except us. The daring of Bully is that rather than providing a drooling character within itself it makes each audience member assume the place, the temporary identity of the drooling pervert. The camera is not the eye of the director or cameraman: the person doing the looking is, in the end, the audience member. In much the same sense as Crash, Bully breaks down traditional, safe boundaries: it is about becoming involved, about participating. Crash is a shocking portrayal of an obsession it invites us to share. In Bully, the camera coaxes us into the teenage mind-set. During the planning of the murder it rolls, tired and bored from one character to another, just like a teenager who is too lazy or simply lacks the guts to contradict the group. During the murder scene the camera becomes disoriented, as though high on fear and adrenalin, and turns away towards the skyline. And when it feels horny, and when it finds nothing else worth focusing on in the story itself, the camera dwells idly on Bijou Philips' crotch. If we simply dismiss whole sequences of Bully as sick creations of Clark's perverse mind (as some critics have), then we miss the point. If the audience doesn't want to be implicated they should stick to less dangerous movies, like Fight Club.

The Jack Gyllenhaal is Hot Movie and others

"My need, though usually held in check or released only on imaginary beings, could, if turned on someone real, devour him" - from Edmund White's novel, A Boy's Own Story.
THE JAKE GYLLENHAAL IS HOT MOVIE
A good film, definitely, even if at times it feels like a bit of a rehash of old war movies (especially Full Metal Jacket). The main thing The Jake Gylenhaal is Hot Movie has going for it is that hottie, Jake Gylenhaal. There's more partial nudity here than in Brokeback Mountain, which says something interesting about the war movie genre, and indeed about war. The theoretical component of Army training seems to be largely a sustained lesson in homophobia (Bex will back this up). Of course it strikes audiences as immensely comical rather than intimidating when the drill sergeant makes extended references to sucking cock etc. (Jake Gylenhaal's narration tells us that by the end of his training a mouth had become a "cum recepticle"), but you've got to remember these soldiers are the dregs of society: white and black trash. They have nothing left to lose but their sense of masculinity. It is common knowledge of course that the line between homo and homophobe really doesn't exist, which accounts for the semi-nude drunken horseplay shown in The Jake Gyllenhaal Has A Hot Ass Movie. But enough about sex. The shots of Jake Gyllenhaal reading The Stranger should clue you in that this movie is existential. That means existence preceeds essence. Or, as Roger Ebert so finely puts it, these soldiers know what they do, but not why they do it. One character says of politics "Forget that shit. We're here, that's what matters" (there is an almost identical line in Black Hawk Down - which isn't nearly as sexy a movie, by the way). Needless to say, after several months of doing absolutely nothing in the desert (the soldiers aren't needed because bombing people is much more "effective" and "safe") Jake Gyllenhaal turns ugly (on the inside, I mean). He is crippled by the meaninglessness of it all. This isn't a great war movie like Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now. Cinematographically, it doesn't stand out - it takes no great risks, it borrows too much, it lacks its own style. Although the soundtrack is good, it is relied upon too much in my view. As Michael Haneke said, an overuse of music is a confession of weakness for a film maker. There is nothing very interesting done with the music here. I'm nit-picking really, because I'm trying to convey why The Jake Gyllenhaal Is Hot Movie is good but not great. It's really well worth seeing.

GUMMO
Now this is a film with a very distinctive style. An art film, for sure. I would recommend Gummo simply because it is so unlike anything you've seen before that whether you "like" it or not is not really relevant. Harmony Korine wrote and directed it (he wrote Kids, which I like). The R18 label tells us that the film contains "Cruelty and Anti-social behaviour", which is fairly accurate. Two boys kill cats with an air-gun and sell the bodies to a Chinese restaurant supplier. Another boy wears big rabbit ears and is shot at with cap guns and called a "queer rabbit" with "not much meat on him". Later he plays the accordian (tunelessly) in a cubicle, then he makes out with two teenage girls in the rain in a swimming pool. Some depressed drunk queer tries to seduce a black midget. There's arm wrestling which turns ugly. There's molestation, there's suicidal ramblings. But the most disgusting scene is the boy (is he Gummo of the title?) being bathed by his mother in near-black bath-water while eating spaghetti and tomato sauce. There are also plenty of fat bitches with terrible teeth and cheap make-up who do . . . nothing, really. The only people with jobs are the boys killing cats. It's all extremely depraved. There isn't a single likeable character. At the end, one of the fat bitches sings "I know Jesus loves me" in a horrible hick voice. Then this is replaced with death metal as the credits roll. My thoughts exactly. These people are rats.

EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN
A really brilliant film by Ang Lee. As the title suggests, it's about the simple pleasures in life (eating and fucking), but it weaves such a compelling, emotional story around these appetites, and it is so delicately, unobtrusively directed and filmed that it both comforts and uplifts us by redeeming these so-called "base" desires. In fact, it's the best "heart-warming" film I've seen since Whale Rider. To understand the care with which this film has been made, it is enough to observe the opening shots of a pair of hands lovingly preparing a meal: this is a microcosm of the whole movie and it left me grinning and hooked.

HANA-BI
Takeshi Kitano's film contains lots of short bursts of brutal and funny violence contrasted with long, languid, meditative scenes of people watching the sea, painting, driving, and generally coming to grips with the meaning of life and death. Beat Takeshi's character owes some Yakuza lots of money and his wife is in hospital dying of cancer. He robs a bank to pay the debt and ruthlessly kills or maims all those who dare disturb his peace thereafter. Meanwhile, he has flashbacks of his friend dying and his other friend being paralysed. The paralysed guy paints some very interesting stuff. A finely constructed and pretty movie.

BASQUIAT
Like Pollock, a movie about an artist going insane (or perhaps he's insane from the get-go). Anyway, he takes lots of heroin, thinks the sky is the sea, neglects his girlfriend when he becomes famous, has some sort of speech impediment. Some very funny drugged-up moments, such as Basquiat being interviewed by a sweating Christopher Walken who desperately tries to get him to say something coherent about his scribbles. Andy Warhol, played by David Bowie, was my favourite character - a complete lunatic. Some fun dialogue. A good soundtrack. Interesting moments, but as a whole mediocre. This director went on to do Before Night Falls, which is better.

SYRIANA

 "Paranoia is having all the facts" - William Burroughs
Like The Film Which Has The Same Title As Crash and Traffic, Syriana is what critics call "kaleidoscopic" (lots of loosely connected stories). It's a good, complicated, depressing thriller about oil companies and the Middle East. George Clooney plays a CIA agent with a cool lone wolf attitude who is double-crossed by just about everyone. There's some oil execs who live in very big houses and are very alarmed about China gaining access to the Middle East's oil resources. There's a fictional kingdom which is very obviously meant to represent Saudi Arabia. In this kingdom there's a power struggle, and Matt Damon plays a financial adviser to the good side. Then there's some downtrodden workers for the oil company who later become terrorists. The film is an intelligent look at the banality of evil. The oil execs are family men on the one hand, but on the other they will do anything to ensure that the Middle East remains unstable and in the hands of dictators who support the US. It's not as good as the thematically similar The Constant Gardener (about drug companies exploiting Africans), perhaps because the latter film is narrower in its focus and therefore more engaging on a human level. Of course, The Constant Gardener also contains Ralph Fiennes' fantastic performance. Both films are well worth seeing

Bloody Mary; All About Eve

Bloody Mary, like The Passion of The Jew, tackles religion head on. It's one of the better recent South Park episodes that I have seen. It's as funny as any Family Guy episode, and even more radical in content and message. For those who haven't seen Bloody Mary, here's a brief summary:
Stan's father becomes an alcoholic and pisses into empty bottles of beer while driving, ("I'm not drinking and driving; I'm driving WHILE I'm drinking!"). He responds to his son's protests with "Stan, you've got a lot to learn about being a man!" When he is pulled over by a patrol car and charged with drunk driving, he joins Alcoholics Anonymous, who convince him he has a disease which can only be cured through religious experience. When he hears of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding out its ass, Stan's father travels to the site to be bathed in the curative blood. This "cures" his alcoholism. But there's a twist: When Pope Benedict arrives to inspect the statue of the Virgin, he finds that it is not bleeding out of its ass, but rather out of its vagina. Thus it is not a real miracle, since "chicks bleed out of their vaginas all the time!" Stan's father learns a valuable lesson: It was not a miracle, but rather his own willpower which enabled him to moderate his drinking.
The controversy that has surrounded Bloody Mary is almost as funny as the episode itself. As usual, the calls to boycott had the exact opposite effect. After only two Dominion Post articles, everyone has been talking about South Park, and it was a ratings coup for C4 (attracting SIX times the normal audience: a total of 210,000 people), whose decision to screen the show months in advance of schedule was described as "arrogant" by some Catholic bitch. Helen Clark's comments are my favourite, though: "What's so funny about a woman's menstrual blood blowing up in the face of the pope? I just don't get it." Apparently she also said "I was offended as a woman". You might wonder what could have possibly compelled her to comment at all.
As I said the other day, I don't really understand what's so offensive about depicting a normal bodily function. All this rhubarb reminds me of that scene in Carrie in which the poor girl is cruelly abused by her mother for having started bleeding, and thus having "fallen", become an unclean woman, full of the Devil. The taboo about menstruation has its routes in a religion which has thrived for millenia on this sort of sexist bullshit, which is far more offensive, in my opinion, than any cartoon.
Many people tend to think of South Park as mindless nihilism, and it often is. But this episode, I think, makes a very strong, bold point about the debilitating power of religion - a point which is too seldom made, in my view, at least in the popular media. Bloody Mary has a clear focus (unlike the sporadic assault on Gibson's film in the aforementioned The Passion of The Jew). It's a very basic plea for common sense, and for taking responsibility for our own actions, rather than blaming "a higher power".

All About Eve
This is an intriguing movie about the nature of idols, heroines, and competitiveness. I found it interesting on another level altogether, as one of the films which inspired All About My Mother (which is an even better film, by the way, perhaps Almodovar's best). All About Eve is one of those exceptionally clever films which doesn't fully reveal itself until the final scene. What is it like to be idolised? It can drive you to alcoholism, madness, self-doubt (how do you live up to your image?). Most of all, it can tell you something about yourself and, as this film shows, you may not be prepared for that knowledge. Imagine meeting someone who has followed you around, observed your every action closely, critically, admiringly. This person can narrate your whole life to you: an illuminating and potentially terrifying experience. This is the fascinating premise of All About Eve, a film I definitely plan to watch again.

Roses of the Prophet Mohammed; Chaos